SG-Harry
by feauxen
Summary: Harry's been wandering the multiverse for some time, researching the mysteries of magic. When he comes across the SGC, he can't help but wonder why Ancient technology seems to work WITH magic instead of exploding on contact. This inevitably leads to all sorts of trouble, and a wizard in the Pegasus galaxy. Harry's a cheeky genius, but not the MoD or even overpowered. Much.
1. A Whole New Reality

**A/N: Writing a HarryPotter/Stargate crossover is hard. Like...really hard. One of the two universes takes magic for granted and actively leans on the mystical wonders of the magical world, while the other explains 'magic' rather scientifically in whatever way is most convenient to the plot at the moment. On top of that, the SG-1 show spent so long doing so little other than teaching humans just how weird and hostile space is that altering that part of the timeline just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. The SGC kind of needs those years of desperate floundering and skin-on-their-teeth close calls in order to become the SGC that we all know and love. So instead of making this a story about how Harry guides humanity to the stars in glorious and boring fashion by the merits of his magical Alteran heritage, I decided to make my crossover about a Harry who has earned a place among the stars, happens across this little Earth-based organization with a cool interstellar portal, and desperately wants to join in the fun.**

 **If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you should read my story anyway. Yes, you. The one who's already typing a flame review. If you don't read my story then you'll never be able to properly complain about how terrible it is without failing miserably, and I'll be able to ignore you in peace.**

 **You've been warned.**

 **(On a completely unrelated note, I do invite polite and well-structured reviews, especially critical ones that point out legitimate flaws. Just...please don't review my story if all you're going to do is whine about how much you don't like it. That doesn't help anyone, and it makes you look like a jackass.)**

* * *

Harry's day started out normally, by his standards. He'd finished up his research on weather manipulation, something which had gotten far more in-depth than he'd expected; and with that done he performed the ritual which would take him to a new alternate reality. With his research complete there was no real reason to stick around, not when there a whole multiverse was out there just waiting to be explored.

Then, he'd landed in front of a rather fascinating ring-shaped portal, one which managed to sustain the interdimensional tear from his ritual for an impressive three seconds after Harry came through. Upon investigation he found that this portal was designed for near-instantaneous wormhole travel to similar portals across interstellar distances, and Harry's ritual had only connected to it because the portal was a conveniently stable aperture for highly unstable interdimensional tears like the ones he summoned to travel between alternate universes. Wormholes were, in theory, quite similar to his ritual-created tears, but despite this Harry hadn't yet figured out how to get this portal to activate. The nearby console-type device had 39 unfamiliar symbols on buttons that glowed and made the portal-ring itself spin and...'dial' a corresponding symbol on the gate, but even though he could tell this was some sort of coordinate entry system for the portal network, Harry couldn't figure out any valid coordinate combinations. On top of that, the technology behind the portal was completely mind-boggling, and even seemed to utilize a form of _magic_ in its workings, which Harry had long considered an impossibility. Harry suspected he may have stumbled on proof of his old friend's theory that magic could be explained in technological terms, once technology advanced far enough. It had only taken him several centuries years of exploration to find it.

If only he could figure out how the damn wormhole ring _worked,_ maybe the discovery of such a potentially groundbreaking artifact would excite him just a bit more.

Now, Harry squatted in some ruins he'd found near the portal. He had no way of knowing whether the occupants of the ruins had built the portal or just used it, but the proximity of the ruins to the portal gave Harry hope that they'd known something about it. This was such a big breakthrough on the theory of what made magic work that Harry wasn't going to leave this reality until he fully understood at least the basics of how the portal operated. Unfortunately, so far all he'd managed to figure out was that the language carved into the ruins appeared to be based on a highly advanced form of latin, (it was actually similar to the dialect used in verbal spellcasting) and that the civilization had been so advanced that they actually carved things like "Caution, slippery floors may occur," in stone. And not only that, but their writing consisted of blocky runes that must have required something like laser etching to accomplish. Well that or, as Harry was beginning to suspect, the residents of these ruins had been able to use something similar to magic to carve their runes into stone however they wanted with barely a thought. Wizards tended to build simple structures out of stone for that very reason.

It was as he mused about the endless possibilities of a civilization that was advanced in both technology and magic that the floating robot hovered up and scanned him.

"Well hello there," Harry said, examining this newcomer. "What are you then?" If he was lucky, this robot could be a remnant of the civilization who'd built the portal. It certainly looked the part. The robot, a spheroid with a few appendages protruding from its body, didn't reply to Harry's question. Nor did it do anything else. It just...hovered there.

"So...I'm Harry," the slightly bemused wizard said, "What are you?"

The robot didn't hesitate to reply this time. "This prophet is a messenger from your god! You will treat it with respect!" a distinctly non-robotic voice shouted.

"You're a...messenger? From what god? But I don't know any gods. How can he be my god if I don't even know him?" Harry had a hard time respecting people who demanded respect. It just rubbed him the wrong way.

After the robot once again fail to answer, Harry spokenup again. "Right," he said, "do you mind if I run a little scan on you, because I'd be fascinated to know how you work."

"This prophet is a messenger from your god! You will treat it with respect!"

Harry stepped back a bit as the robot's appendages twitched with irritation, and two rather energy-weapon looking appendages which had been idle before began tracking his movement. "Right," he said only a little sarcastically, "I will treat this prophet with respect." Glancing at the wand in his hand, Harry took stock of his situation. He'd just been examining the runes on the ruins visually, so he didn't need to pack up anything up if this prophet-bot started shooting at him. Still, he didn't really want to provoke the it, especially if it could help him figure out how the portal worked.

"So if you're a prophet, what's your message?" Harry wondered aloud, "I mean, you must have a message other than-"

"This prophet is a messenger from your god! You will treat it with respect!"

"...yes, that. Do you say anything else?"

"Identify yourself!" A new voice demanded.

"Wait, you do say other things? You were holding out on me," Harry accused the probe playfully.

"Impudent wretch! You will treat the prophet of your god with respect!" The robot shouted, still in the new voice.

"Right, sorry. Erm...you wouldn't happen to have come through that portal back there, would you?" Harry pointed off behind him.

"You do not ask questions, shak'tar! Kneel before the prophet of your god!"

Harry didn't know what shak'tar meant, but he figured it wasn't very nice. Slowly losing hope that this prophet would be of any help to him, he began to say, "Alright, I tried being nice. Look-"

Sst-PHEW! PHEW!

With barely a hiss for a warning, the robot opened fire. Harry hastily cast a shield, which crumbled under the weapons fire, but he ducked behind the nearest pillar just in time. Oh, well. This pillar _probably_ didn't talk about the how to work with the portal. Harry certainly hoped it didn't, because the robot was slowly circling the pillar in an attempt to shoot him, and in the process it was annihilating all of the runes. As Harry looked mournfully at the lost ancient writings, he noticed something interesting.

"These are plasma burns," he said aloud. Then a plasma blast whizzed past his head and he hastily ducked around the pillar, continuing the deadly game of chase-me-round-the-tree.

Plasma weapons, Harry thought to himself. That explained why his protego had gone down so quickly, it was only designed to absorb spellfire and kinetic energy, not the heat a plasma weapon gave off. Fortunately, Harry had discovered a handy solution to that problem a while back. He quickly conjured a large transparent sheet of reinforced ceramic material, strengthened and lightened it with some quick enchantments, and then attached it to his left arm. Thus protected, he stepped out from behind the pillar and took aim at the robot, casting a brilliant blue bolt of lightning that overloaded several systems and caused a critical shutdown. As the robot dropped to the ground, Harry felt a distinct sense of anticlimax. A few shots from the robot had impacted his conjured shield, but they'd been completely ineffective.

"You know," he mused to himself, "getting shot at is never dull, but I must say that you weren't much of a challenge. Almost makes me wish for the good old days, when getting into fights meant my life was on the line…" Harry sighed aloud. "Oh well, let's see what we've got here."

He squatted down and began to strip down and examine the robot. As he did so, the feelings of disappointment only grew. The technology was light-years behind the portal's design, and the thing seemed to be more of a scavenger than a prophet, designed for exploration and salvage. The only really interesting part was a long-range communications array capable of communicating over distances of nearly 100,000 light years. This array, apparently, was what had allowed the 'prophet' to start speaking intelligently instead of just shouting its pre-programmed message at him. So in all likelihood, whoever created the probe knew how to work the portal network. Unless they had a ship capable of interstellar travel and they relied exclusively on that, but Harry doubted that was the case. The robot was a cobbled-together amalgamation of a lot of different kinds of technology, as though it was designed by scavengers who would use every little bit of useful technology they came across for their own purposes.

So Harry set to work, carefully using some delicate spells which had been designed for this exact purpose to decode the drone's programming and attempt to pinpoint the method it used to activate or travel through the portals. It was entirely possible that the portals were activated by something other than the drone, but this was the best lead Harry had gotten all day, and he preferred working with technology over the prospect of ancient writings on broken-down ruins.

Before he'd made much headway, unfortunately, he heard the sound of plasma weapons in the distance, met with the unexpected sound of standard Earth machine-gun fire. Were there more of these robots? That promised trouble. Harry looked speculatively at the robot he'd gutted.

"Well, you weren't much trouble, but it sounds like you brought friends. Maybe they'll get the old adrenaline pumping, eh?" Harry conjured another full-body shield, enchanted it to be bulletproof (just in case) and took off running toward the gunfire. And, he realized, also in the direction of the portal. Had these newcomers come through the portal? Coming to the top of a low hill, Harry paused and lay low, surveying the situation. Two soldiers had taken up a defensive position by the portal, and were slowly working their way toward the nearby console, as though their plan was to use the portal to retreat or call for backup. Seeing his chance to finally figure out how the portal worked, and noticing that the plasma weapons used by the armored enemy bearing down on the soldiers were quite similar to the ones on the drone he'd come across, Harry decided that he needed to assist the underdog in this situation.

Taking a moment to choose a spell that would achieve his desired effect, Harry stood up. Wand movements were always tricky when he was lying down, and the spell he had chosen was quite a finicky one. Mentally preparing himself and taking a calming breath to steady himself, Harry allowed his mind to drift back to some of his more disturbing memories.

"May heaven help me but...I summon theeee, servant of olde." Harry chanted the latter part in guttural tones, waving his wand in a manner that would have appeared random to the uninitiated. The effects weren't immediately apparent, but then one of the armored warriors stepped into a newly forming black puddle and tripped, dropping his staff weapon. Then, slowly, the black ooze flowed up the warrior's leg, engulfing the poor man. As the warrior disappeared into the ooze, the beast's eyes began to pop to the surface. Harry winced. That wasn't a pleasant way to go. Knowing that the armored warriors would be busy for the foreseeable future, Harry ran across the open battlefield toward the soldiers he'd just saved. They were looking at the ever-growing black ooze in shock and mild horror.

 **A/N: Yes, Harry just conjured up a shoggoth to deal with a bunch of Jaffa. And since he knew exactly what he was doing, it worked exactly the way he wanted it to. This ain't his first rodeo. Or even his first shoggoth.**

"What the hell is that?" one soldier asked the other, having missed Harry's approach.

"Telliki-li," Harry replied, unable to resist. Both soldiers started violently and pointed their guns at him. Smiling, Harry held out his hands in a universal gesture of peaceful intent. "Relax, boys, it's helping out. For now. Look, I'm a bit...lost here, and I figure this portal we're standing next to is my best way off the planet. Do either of you know how to work it?"

The soldiers exchanged worried glances. "Who the hell are you?" One demanded.

"Who cares who he is," the other interjected, "we need to call for backup, fast! Wells isn't going to last much longer, especially with all these Jaffa everywhere!"

Harry frowned. "You have a man down in the field?" The two soldiers didn't say anything, but the looks on their faces were enough. "Right, stay here. It's probably my fault these 'Jaffa' guys are here anyway. I'll go get your friend, you call for backup!" Not giving the soldiers any chance to respond, Harry took off running, keeping his ceramic shield between him and any visible threats, idly casting a few spells at the black ooze to ensure that it didn't become overly dangerous until after he was long gone. Hopefully. For now, the ooze would be content to absorb the armored warriors slowly, one by one, having disarmed and enveloped the poor bastards before they really knew what had hit them.

Moving past that scene, and trying not to think about it too much, Harry listened closely and once more heard the crackling of gunfire, this time from within the ruins. Running towards it, Harry cast a disillusionment charm on himself to add to the element of surprise. Then he charged around the next corner, wand blazing with a wide variety of offensive spells. Jaffa fell left and right, some struck with massive boils, others beset by dozens of flying snakes, but most simply knocked to the to the ground in various states of unconsciousness. After about 10 seconds, Harry stopped casting and took stock of the situation. Armored bodies littered the ground 30 feet in front of him, several Jaffa were running away, and one soldier in the same uniform as the other two he'd met was crouched over another soldier who was lying on the ground. Wells, Harry presumed. He dropped the disillusionment.

"He got by those bloody plasma blasts, didn't he?" Harry asked aloud. The crouching soldier warily nodded. "Right, well, I know a thing or two about plasma wounds, and I'm willing to trade my services for a ride off this planet. Do you think we can come to an agreement?"

The soldier looked at him nervously. "Who are you?"

Harry smiled reassuringly. "My name is Harry Potter and I'm from Earth, just not any Earth you'd know about. Now, how about I take a look at your friend and see if we can't get him out of here?"

The soldier looked at Harry doubtfully, but stood and got out of the way.

"Good," Harry said. "Now," he muttered to himself, "let's see how bad you are." As he examined the sizeable plasma burn, he began waving his wand over the wound and casting general anaesthetic and disinfectant spells.

"What's that?" the other soldier asked sharply, suddenly pointing his machine gun at Harry.

"Relax," Harry said calmly, "this is a wand. It's...sort of an all-purpose tool I use to channel magic. I'm using it to ease this man's pain and protect him from infection."

"Ain't no such thing as magic," the soldier stated firmly, "How's this wand thing work?"

Harry sighed. "Well, I'm actually not overly familiar with wandlore, but I can tell you that it contains the tail feather of a rather impressive phoenix, and this feather allows it to effectively channel my magical power. I'm the source of the magic, the wand merely helps me direct my power more precisely. Now, would you like me to help your friend or not?"

As Harry said this, the man in question groaned, slowly returning to consciousness. "Who...are you?" The soldier asked weakly.

Harry placed a calming hand on the soldier's uninjured shoulder. "I'm Harry, and I'm here to help get you out of here. I suspect that I'm also the reason a battalion of Jaffa were poking around here, so I feel a bit responsible for your injury. Now, tell me, where do you feel the most numbness?"

The wounded man stared at Harry in confusion. "Why...why doesn't it hurt?"

"I've numbed your wound," Harry explained, "the less sensation you feel, the more pain your body's in. I've just tricked your mind into inverting the pain. Now tell me, where do you feel the most numb?"

The soldier squinted as he processed what Harry was saying. "My shoulder...and it's spreading into my chest."

Harry swore. "All right, don't panic. I'm going to have to levitate you a bit to help drain the fluids. This won't hurt a bit, and it should help with that spreading numbness." Harry gently lifted the man off the ground with a spell, rotating him so that the internal bleeding would drain away from his internal organs. This display of magic drew a gasp from the uninjured soldier, but Harry ignored that as he cast a few spells designed to slow the metabolic process for deep meditation. They wouldn't do much to help the healing process, but they would slow the internal bleeding and keep the man stable as they got him to safety. "All right, I've stabilized him but he'll need professional help. Keep an eye out, I'll get him back to the portal." As Harry lifted the man and cast a more sturdy levitation charm, something occurred to him. "You...are planning on withdrawing through the portal, right?"

Before the soldier could answer, his radio crackled to life. "Bosworth, Wells, backup is on the way. What's your situation?"

As they ran toward the portal, the man replied, "I don't think we'll need backup, sir, we've received assistance from some kind of…magician, I guess, and he's helping carry Wells back to the gate."

There was a stunned pause. "A wizard? You mean that black-haired freaky guy?"

Bosworth glanced over at Harry, who was currently levitating a man as they ran. "Yeah, I think so, sir. He says his name is Harry. We should be at the gate in 30 seconds, Bosworth out."

"Acknowledged, Bosworth, I'll alert the SGC."

The radio went silent, and before long Harry, Bosworth, and the injured soldier crested the final hill and caught sight of the portal, or what these soldiers called the 'gate.' One of the men Harry had talked to before was pressing the symbol buttons on the console, and the other was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, a massive wave of energy burst forth from the portal, collapsing into a blue event horizon similar to the one Harry had stepped through when he came to this reality. Harry felt a thrill of excitement course through him. He was actually going to get to see how it worked!

The soldier who'd dialed the coordinates fiddled with something on his wrist. Then he looked up and saw Harry, Bosworth, and the man Harry was levitating. "Woah…" he said, taking a moment to inspect the hovering soldier. Then he collected himself. "Right Harry, I don't know who you are, but you say you're trapped here, and you've helped save one of my men. For that, I'm inviting you to leave with us. You interested?"

Harry felt a goofy smile form on his face. "Are you kidding me? I'd be delighted!" He looked at the portal in admiration. "After you?"

The soldier stared Harry down for a moment, probably hoping that he'd made the right choice in trusting the strange man he'd just met, before he nodded. "SGC, this is Col. Dixon," the apparent colonel said into his radio. "We've got Dixon and Wells, and we've picked up...something of a friendly local. Proceeding through the gate." Then the man ran through the event horizon, followed closely by Harry and Bosworth.

Travel through the portal was...unpleasant. Harry was familiar with the mechanics involved, as he used similar tears in spacetime to travel between dimensions, but the portal's wormhole felt...colder than his inter-reality ritual. It compressed him down to a mere thought and shot him across the universe, completely impartial to his feelings on the matter. As he came out of the portal, Harry resolved to find a way to refine the process, because the ability to travel across interplanetary distances in an instant was one thing, but Harry preferred to travel in comfort.

He was distracted from this train of thought by a small woman asking, "What...how are you doing that?"

Harry looked her up and down. She wore a long white coat and was leading a team of medical professionals with a stretcher. This was the medical help the wounded soldier needed, and she was being distracted by his levitation spell. "Magic, my good doctor," Harry explained simply. "He was hit in the shoulder with one of those plasma weapons, and he's got a bit of internal bleeding in his chest. I slowed his metabolic process to reduce blood flow, but he needs professional help. I assume that would be you?"

The woman stared at him for a second before a mask of professionalism dropped over her face. "What did you give him for that?" she asked.

"I used a series of spells which was designed to aid in deep meditation. It reduces the speed of his heart and slows his whole body's metabolic process. I didn't give him any drugs, if that's what you're asking."

The woman looked at him speculatively, but seemed to grudgingly accept his explanation. "Well then, if you could get him on the stretcher, I'll take him from here."

Harry easily floated the man onto the stretcher and released the levitation spell. "He's all yours, ma'am. Give him my best wishes." Harry would have directed his last comment at the man himself, but the meditation spells had lulled him into a stupor.

As the medical team took off down a hallway, a bald, rotund man stepped forward. "And who's this, Colonel?" he asked.

"This is...Harry, sir," the colonel replied, "he summoned some ungodly creature on the Jaffa that were attacking us and then proceeded to single handedly retrieve Wells and Bosworth from their position, where they were surrounded by Jaffa."

Harry examined the rotund man. He had an air of command about him, two stars on each shoulder, and he was the only military man in the room not dressed in field greens. This was the man in charge around here. Stepping forward, Harry offered held out a hand. "My name is Harry Potter, and the colonel's story is quite right. Perhaps summoning a shoggoth wasn't the best idea, but it did subdue the Jaffa. And it was the least I could do to help your men out, as I suspect that the robotic probe I came across on that planet was what brought down a battalion of hostile warriors."

The rotund man looked at Harry's hand for a moment before shaking it firmly. "I'm Major General George Hammond, and I'd like to offer you my thanks. It sounds like you more than made up for bringing the Goa'uld's attention to that planet, and you may have saved Airman Wells's life. That means a great deal to me."

Harry nodded graciously. "Well, my motives weren't completely altruistic. I was...sort of stranded on that planet, and I'd been trying to figure out how to access this portal network," he said, gesturing to the dormant portal behind him, "your men were kind enough to get me out of there. For that, I am most grateful."

General Hammond frowned. "If you didn't come through the Stargate, how did you get onto that planet? Do you have a spaceship?"

Harry smiled as memories of his time piloting spaceships were brought to mind. Shaking them away, he said, "Well, that's actually a long and rather complicated tale. Do you have a place where we might discuss it in detail?"

"Ah. Yes, as a matter of fact we do," Hammond said, gesturing to the door opposite of the one the medical staff had used. "Airman Halling can take you to our briefing room while I attend to a few matters of my own. I'll be with you shortly. Oh, and Halling?" Hammond turned to one of the many well-armed soldiers in the room.

"Yes, sir?"

"Keep him away from the camera crews. This qualifies as an ongoing mission in my book, and I don't want it getting out."

"Yes, sir!" The airman saluted the general before turning to Harry. The wizard amicably allowed himself to be guided through a control room of sorts and up a set of stairs to a well lit room with a video screen, a long table, and several well padded office chairs. Harry was impressed. He'd been expecting a military briefing room to be more...austere. In the corner, he noticed an American flag next to another flag he didn't recognize. On the wall was an emblem similar to the one on the unfamiliar flag, with a prominent rune-like inverted V shape over something that resembled one of the glowing protrusions on the portal that had brought him here. The letters 'SGC' were printed above the overlapping shapes. Harry wondered idly what it all meant.

"Admiring the emblem?"

Harry jerked away in surprise. General Hammond had entered the room while he was distracted. "I was just...yes, actually," the wizard said, desperately trying to calm down. "Sorry, I must still be a little jumpy after the murder-bot with built-in plasma canons."

"The murder...bot?" Hammond asked tentatively.

"Ah," Harry said, "I should probably start that story at the beginning, shouldn't I?"

And so Harry sat in one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs as the general took his seat at the head of the table. "The first thing you should know about me," Harry began, "is that I'm from an alternate reality. So while I'm from Earth, I'm not from your Earth, and I don't yet know exactly which details are different about this one." General Hammond didn't look as surprised about that as most of the people Harry told his story to, so he continued. "The most significant difference, or at least I assume it's different, is that I come from an Earth where there's a secret society of witches and wizards, hidden away from what you would call the 'normal' world, but what we called the muggle world. And really, we hid from them because there were too many of them and not enough of us. The genes that grant me magical ability are mostly recessive in humans, and that lead to difficulties maintaining a stable population, let alone trying to encourage population growth. It wasn't as big of an issue when we could intermingle with muggles, but our version of the Salem Witch Trials caused the entire magical world to go into hiding.

"So understand that when I say I was born with magic flowing through my veins, I am in a sense telling the literal truth. Magic is more like something that one summons from the ether through a conduit that only a witch or wizard has access to, but the genetic code for that conduit does indeed flow through my veins. Whether or not that makes me the next evolution of mankind is...debatable." Harry stopped there, having realized he'd gotten a bit off topic. That was a bad habit of his, but he had been a researcher for so long that he just couldn't help himself.

"Are you saying that you...know how this magic of yours works?" General Hammond asked in a slightly awestruck voice.

Harry was surprised. Usually the people he talked to, especially military people, would have told him to shut up and get to the point by now. But this general, it seemed, was different.

"Well, I've been studying the inherent properties of magic and technology for years now, actually." Harry said. "It's not something most witches and wizards even bother to ask about, but a friend of mine got me wondering about where magic comes from when I was in school. Several years later, after some unique circumstances sort of...took over my life, I found myself in the unique position of being able to start an extended research project of sorts into the matter. It's been more than 300 years since then, and I must say that my research led me to a great many fascinating conclusions."

General Hammond looked like he'd been given exactly what he'd always wanted as a child at the tender age of fifty, and couldn't get over just how amazing it was that his wish had finally been granted. "Well...I don't know what to say. My men tell me that you're a capable warrior in the field, that you saved them from an incredibly perilous situation, and that we're frankly quite lucky to have you around. I can't even begin to imagine what someone like yourself would want from a place like this, but I imagine that my superiors would bend over backwards just to get you to stay."

Harry blinked. And then he blinked again. These people...wanted him to stay? That was a first. "Well...actually General, I was hoping to study that portal we used to get here." Harry said, "I've never seen anything like it before, and I suspect that I've finally found a technological device capable of utilizing magical energy without short-circuiting. If I'm right, then just the existence of such a device would be a breakthrough the likes of which...well, back home I'd be even more famous than Merlin! If you're willing to let me stick around and study the mechanics of your Stargate and any similar technology you have lying around, I would be delighted to share some of the many things I've learned among my travels."

The look on George Hammond's face in that moment could have lit up a whole house, it was so delighted. Harry got the feeling that this would be the most pleasant universe he'd been to in quite some time.

 **A/N: Hoo, boy. I wrote this whole chapter on an iPod. No, not an iPad. An iPod. Did you know that you can download Google docs onto a modern iPod? It makes sense when you think about it, but the marvels of technology still amaze me, especially since my iPod is so old it doesn't get iOS updates anymore. Anyway, school just got out, it's summertime, and my SG-Harry plot bunny has finally escaped its cage so that I can tell its story to the world. No promises on a strict upload schedule, but I should have chapters out on a fairly regular basis. I've decided to eschew all other responsibilities and be a writer this summer, because I'm lucky enough that I can just...do that if I want to. And also, now that I'm focused on writing, I have a decent idea what went wrong with each and every one of my other stories (they lacked good theming to drive the plot) and I've figured out how to put good theming into this story. I hope.**

 **tl;dr, it's summer, I have free time, and this story won't go the way of the poor, abandoned fics that haunt my published stories page because I've cracked down on the real problem this time...I hope. If this fails...well, it won't. XD**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**

 **;; sidenote ;;**

 **as it turns out, using an iPod to post chapters on this freaking website results in formatting problems. (spoiler alert for the later sidenotes, I found the actual problem. It wasn't my iPod, funnily enough) So the Author's Notes weren't bolded, and I didn't even know about it. *internal screaming of authorial rage* I believe I've fixed the problem now. If I haven't, we can only blame Steve Jobs, because the laptop I'm borrowing is still an apple device, just like my uncooperative phone and iPod. (Steve Jobs is innocent of all his crimes. I'm sorry apple fans, but I still don't like their current business model.)**

 **;;; sidetone the second ;;;**

 ***deep calming breaths, feauxen* as it turns out, you just can't put bolded text into the document editor on this very frustrating website. fuck my life.**

 **;;; hey look, a third sidenote ;;;**

 **I'm home now. I have a proper computer. My formatting can be its old self again now. I am content with the world.**

 **;;;; sidenote...the fourth ;;;;**

 **I'm submitting an error report now. The problem is this damn editor. It's lost the ability to keep bold text bold during the saving process. *repressed internal rage escapes in a surprisingly expressive sigh of repressed internal rage***


	2. Getting to know the General

**A/N: Blah blah, some trite shit about how grateful I am to have people who enjoy my story enough to read it and review. I'm actually writing this before I know how well the first chapter was received, so all that second chapter "Thank you so much for reading!" bullcrap wouldn't really work here.**

 **Anyway, here's chapter 2!**

* * *

Major General George Hammond was not Harry's friend. Oh, the man had been nice enough during their initial meeting, and had even personally escorted Harry on a detailed tour of the base. But one little detail that the general had failed to mention when Harry agreed to stick around was that suddenly, Harry was working with the military. This meant there was a very strict chain of command and Harry, who was for all intents and purposes a highly specialized civilian consultant, answered directly to the man in charge...one Major General George Hammond.

Really, that wouldn't have been an issue, but it had been forever since Harry had worked with anything resembling a military, and he'd forgotten just how...demanding they were. After the tour of the base, the general had introduced him to a woman with close-cropped blonde hair named Samantha Carter and all but ordered the two of them to exchange their knowledge and understandings of magic with one another. Apparently Samantha (who was okay just being called Sam) knew more than anyone else on Earth about alien technology, and made a hobby out of dabbling with the less dangerous alien devices they came across. In short, she was the one all the local jocks turned to when they needed a science-y explanation for something, and she filled that role quite nicely.

After a 5-hour long brain picking session with Sam, Harry had managed to politely ask where he would be sleeping and before collapsing into his bed, exhausted. He didn't even bother to set up wards, he was so tired. This proved to be a mistake, as he was woken up at 7:30 sharp by an airman 'requesting' that he grab a quick bite to eat before going to see General bloody Hammond to talk about the probe he'd mentioned yesterday. The meeting lasted about for about a half-hour, and then the general 'suggested' that Harry talk more on the matter with Sam, and Harry found himself being dragged back down into a laboratory chalk filled with gadgets and do-dads where he was enthusiastically encouraged to show off his magic so that Sam could run some tests. By this point, Harry was irritated enough that he didn't bother to warn her that the majority of her gadgets and do-dads would break if he used his magic near them. And so, after a lot of short-circuiting and an entirely insincere apology on Harry's part, he was dragged off to an different underground lab, put in a Faraday cage, and told to try again.

By this point, he really just wanted to find a quiet place with no overenthusiastic blondes, sit down, and ponder exactly where he had gone wrong, so Harry took great pleasure in the shock on Sam's face as fried her sensors right through the cage. And he also fried the sensor she'd put inside the cage in the hopes that it might be able to survive exposure to magic at close range, just to prove that he could.

Unfortunately, his victory was hollow, as Sam decided to go back to the previous days's approach and ask him _all_ of the questions. Harry had researched the nature of magic pretty much full-time for over three centuries, and even he didn't have answers to all of Sam's questions. The woman was insatiable!

After a brief lunch break that Harry had to not-so-subtly suggest five bloody times, Sam returned to her original lab and started fiddling with her broken sensors. And then she had the nerve to ask Harry if he could help her fix them! Not wishing to offend the woman who undoubtedly knew more than anyone else on the base about the Stargate, Harry politely refused to help her and slipped away to find some peace and quiet.

At first, he merely retreated to his room, but the concrete walls made him feel a bit trapped. So he posted a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on his door, set up wards strong enough to keep anything short of a tank from getting through the walls of his room, and quietly apparated away to the park in Little Whinging. It was the first place that came to mind that Harry figured would be about the same in this new world; and more importantly it was a mostly green, natural place where mankind met nature and, to an extent, coexisted. This park had never really been a refuge to Harry, as it was the stomping grounds of Dudley's gang, but it was the place where he and Dudley had been attacked by dementors together. In the many years after that incident, Harry and Dudley had come to a sort of understanding with each other about their whole life, and Harry personally traced their ability to finally get along with each other back to this simple park. It was a peaceful place, the park, especially when there weren't any dementors around. Looking at it now, Harry could understand Fudge's incredulity at his teenage self's story. Dementors? Here? That really didn't make sense without someone like Umbridge involved.

Harry took a deep, cleansing breath in, and then let it out in a long sigh. If he could come to terms with Dudley, he could come to terms with General Hammond. He just needed to go about it right. Hammond would be much simpler to understand, comparatively. Harry just needed some time to collect his thoughts before he dove back into the well-structured chaos that was the SGC.

And so Harry sat in the grass beneath a tree, cast the familiar meditation spells on himself, and allowed himself to slip into a deep trance as he considered everything he'd learned about his current situation.

Approximately one day later, Harry opened his eyes, took a deep breath in...and let out a violent sneeze. Startled abruptly from his meditative trance, Harry shot to his feet, habitually drawing his wand and then pointing it wildly at his surroundings.

Then his brain caught up with his body, and he noticed what had caused his sudden awakening. He'd been sitting under a pine tree, a Jefferson Pine by the smell. The tree had dropped several pollen pods on him as he meditated, and one had broken on his head. The resulting puff of pollen had, predictably, provoked a very violent reaction from Harry's nasal passage, violent enough to upset even his deep meditation. Harry shook his head. This was why those monks liked to meditate in monasteries, he realized. It was harder for the real world to interrupt one's meditation when one surrounded oneself self with walls and like-minded souls.

Still, if he was reading the stars right, a whole day had passed already, and he needed to get back to the SGC before they got too worried about him. With a soft crack, Harry apparated back to his room. Extending his senses briefly, he smiled. They hadn't even touched his wards. For all they knew, he'd been hiding in his room, not fleeing across the Atlantic to clear his head.

Smiling pleasantly at that thought, Harry opened his door and came face-to-face with some sort of jury-rigged scanner that had been pointed at his door. His smile faded. They hadn't managed to breach his wards, but of course they were putting them under a microscope. From the technology Harry had seen in Sam's lab, they'd probably never encountered anything quite like the wards he'd raised around his room.

Looking around carefully, Harry was pleased to note that Sam was nowhere to be seen. At least he didn't have to deal with more endless questions about the methods he'd used to finally catch a break from her endless questions. That would have been awkward.

Deciding that he needed to make a bit of a statement, Harry apparated loudly up to the briefing room. It was empty, and the door connecting it to General Hammond's office was closed. Still, Harry could see the general sitting at his desk, looking cautiously out the window in an attempt to determine what the loud crack of Harry's apparation had been. Harry met the man's eyes and gave him a Look.

The general, to his credit, decided to come out of his office to talk to Harry. "Harry, we've been worried about you-" he began, but Harry cut him off.

"General Hammond, I am not upset. I am irritated, and I think that with a little discussion about boundaries, we can resolve the issue. But that will require both of us to reach an honest compromise. Do you understand that?"

Hammond's face fell, but he gestured into his office. "I think I do, Harry. Let's sit down and talk about it."

Harry noted idly that the general would probably feel more comfortable having this talk in his office, but he decided to indulge the man. After all, the whole complex was technically the man's home turf. It wouldn't hurt Harry to enter the general's office.

After the two men sat down, a staring contest ensued as Harry tried to read the general's intentions, and Hammond tried to do the same to Harry. After two full minutes of this, Harry broke the silence.

"I don't know how many dealings you've had with people like me, General, but I can tell that what few you have had weren't terribly extensive. Do you care to take a guess at how I know this?"

Hammond looked surprised at the question, but carefully considered it before answering. "It's as you say. The only advanced race of beings we've ever had extended diplomatic relations with is the Asgard, and they have their own issues to deal with."

"General," Harry chided, "you've avoided the question. Why have the other races you've encountered refused to help you?"

Hammond's brow furrowed deeply as the experienced general considered a very carefully pointed question.

"Well," General Hammond said, "I've gotten the impression from the various advanced races we've encountered that they don't think we're...ready for their technology."

Harry nodded agreeably. "You aren't, in all likelihood. In fact, if you treated the Asgard anything like you treated me, I'm very impressed that they kept up diplomatic relations with you at all."

Harry knew phrasing his sentiment in this fashion would offend the general, but he wanted to see just how the commander of the SGC would respond when he was figuratively pushed around a bit in his own office.

"And just what, exactly, do you mean by that?" General Hammond asked threateningly, shifting slightly in his chair in what was probably an attempt to subtly intimidate Harry.

"What I mean by that, General Hammond, is that you set Miss Carter on me like a hound, and she's not given me a moment of peace since you did. I am not known for my temper, but two full days of exposure to that kind of questioning would try even the most patient of men! I came here to work with you, General, and you seem to instead be trying to make me work for you. Can you see why that might upset me?"

The General's eyes flashed dangerously, but then, remarkably, the man backed down and slumped into his chair before looking up to stare Harry directly in the eyes. Harry met his gaze evenly.

"You're testing us, aren't you?" he finally asked.

Harry smiled. "Yes, General Hammond, I am. And while I must say that you're a little rough around the edges, I think with a few years of hard work you could easily be ready to share in all of the knowledge that I've picked up over the years. But you must understand, General, that it took me several centuries to get where I am today. Even if I help ease you into it, you won't be ready or even able to learn everything I know all at once."

Hammond looked as though he was trying to hide his disappointment. "So…what are you saying?"

"What I'm saying, General, is that I came here to study the wormhole device you call the Stargate, and in the last 72 hours I haven't even been given a chance to get near the thing. If you want me to stick around and help you out, you need to hold up your end of the bargain."

Hammond's face fell. "That's...not as easy as you might think. I do command the men in this base, but I simply don't have final say when it comes to strangers messing with the Stargate. And quite frankly, I don't yet trust you enough to let you mess with our Stargate even if I did. You must understand that we can't take a risk like that when we don't even know you."

That gave Harry pause. He'd been under the impression that Hammond's word was law on the base, because even the lowly airman in the embarkation room jumped to follow his orders. But apparently if Harry really wanted to get his hands on the Stargate, he'd need to commit to a long-term mutual relationship with the SGC and hope that they came to trust him after a while.

"General Hammond, it wasn't three days ago that you said your superiors would bend over backwards just to keep me here. And while I understand that you were telling the truth, I can't help but feel like I was being deceived. So perhaps we should start again, and you should tell me why I shouldn't just use your Stargate to leave this planet behind and seek out Ancient technology on my own."

Harry wasn't willing to spend time building a relationship with this version of Earth unless they were willing to extend him a little trust. Sure, he could force the matter and just Imperiurize the lot of them, but Harry avoided the Imperius curse on general principle. Besides, the Imperius really wasn't a necessary evil when there was a whole network of Stargates to study and only a few unprepared muggles standing between him and the rest of the galaxy. Hell, Harry was alone with their leader right now, with a well-placed compulsion and a touch of charm, he could be on his way to see the galaxy in minutes. And yet...Harry felt like this particular General didn't deserve that kind of treatment, so he had decided to offer the man a second chance, hidden in a slight challenge to the man's authority.

Hammond took his time in responding to Harry's challenge. It was clearly only just occurring to the man that Harry might very well decide to leave the base, and that Harry also didn't think they'd be able to stop him.

Eventually, the general stood from his chair and extended his hand to Harry. "If we're going to start over, I think we should start from the very beginning, with introductions. I am Major General George Hammond, and I'm the leader of the Stargate Command."

Harry grinned, stood, and shook the General's hand. "It's a pleasure, General Hammond. My name is Harry Potter, and I'm a wizard from an Earth that's rather different to yours. I think that maybe, with some work, we'll be able to get along."

* * *

 **A/N: Whew. That was an intense negotiation scene! I'm really glad that I'm not General Hammond right now, because I am nowhere near as competent a leader as he is, and I'd never be able to pull off a negotiation like that with a person like Harry.**

 **But hey, that's why I'm the author, and not a Four Star General in the Air Force who was supposed to retire before all of this shit started flying everywhere. Erm…that sentence got away from me. Whoops.**

 **It's a shorter chapter today, but that's because it didn't take 5,000 words to get Harry and the SGC cooperating with each other, it only took 2,700 words. My chapters will be as long as they need to be, and no longer. I will also post them as soon as I've gotten a good night's sleep and looked them over one last time. This is just how I'm writing my story, and that's how this is going to be whether you like it or not, Mr. Anonymous Flaming Guest.**

 **That's right, you. You know who you are.**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	3. Settling into the Base

**A/N: So...now I do happen to know now that this story's getting well received, because despite my lack of laptop, my phone's been dinging off the hook with email notifications of favorites, followers, and reviews on this story. Thank you all for showing me that you like my story, it really, truly does help.**

 **(lolkid, you reviewed my story but your private messaging is disabled. Oh well. I'll just reply to you here, because you touched on a rather significant plot point.)**

 **For those who don't read my reviews, lolkid expressed a general distaste for the SGC and said that Harry should bypass them and just use magic to find ancient technology for himself. And lolkid, you have a good point. Harry** _ **could**_ **do that, and he could do it very easily. But there's something I want all of my readers to know about Harry, and that's that Harry Potter is the good guy in this story. And the good guy in this story isn't going to be like the arrogant and technologically advanced races from the Stargate shows. Harry is going to help humanity better themselves. Why would he bother doing that, you may ask?**

 **The answer is quite simple. Harry doesn't think for one second that he's in any way 'better' than non-magical humans. Harry is centuries old, and most of what he knows at this point was taught to him by non-magical humans. So he's developed a sort of fondness for them, at least the ones that aren't rude to strangers. And the main characters of the Stargate shows, for all of their flaws, were never the type to be jerks just because they were confronted with a powerful wizard.**

 **Now, to all the flamers out there...actually, I'm ignoring flames on general principle. So y'all flamers can keep on flaming, for all I care. I won't even moderate your review if you flame me anonymously. I want everyone to see your little moment of internet rage, preserved for all time in my review section. Because internet rage is** _ **always**_ **stupid, especially when it's directed at some random fanfic by a person who clearly loves their fandom a lot. And the punishment for stupid in my house is that** _ **everyone**_ **gets to come, look, and laugh at how stupid you are until even you've realized what's so funny about it to us adults.**

 **Enjoy!**

 **(Oh, and I have my laptop back now. That's why the formatting is pretty again.)**

* * *

Immediately after his discussion with Hammond, Harry went looking for Sam. Despite her insatiable curiosity (or perhaps because of it) Harry saw a kindred spirit in her, and he wanted to have a little talk with her now that her ultimate superior understood Harry's position. He probably wouldn't need to pull the 'I've talked this over with your boss' card on her, but it would certainly help him out to have that metaphorical card to play, especially if Sam went into another learning frenzy.

Unsurprisingly, Sam was in her lab, working on one of the gadgets that Harry hadn't managed to fry two days earlier. Harry knocked on the doorframe. "What's that supposed to do?"

Sam, without looking up, dove straight into an explanation. "Theoretically it's supposed to be a highly advanced communications device, but the only reason I even know that much is because of the odd subspace frequencies it's giving off, and most of them didn't look quite like communication bands to me, so…" she trailed off, probably not expecting a coherent answer.

"It sound to me like it's some kind of 'subspace' detection system then." Harry commented. "I mean, that's also just a theory, but detection frequencies never look anything like communication bands."

Sam hmmed vaguely at him, absorbed as she was in her work. Then she paused. "Wait…what?" She looked up and noticed for the first time who she was talking to. "Harry! I...I didn't expect you to be...what are you doing here?"

Harry smiled. He made an effort never to get so deep into his work that he lost track of his surroundings, but he's still been in Sam's position many times. "Well," the wizard said, "I'm here to talk to you a bit about the last couple of days, actually, but I'm perfectly willing to talk about your…what did you call it? Your 'subspace' transmitter, that was it."

Sam stared at Harry, clearly befuddled. "Why are you saying subspace like that?"

Harry chuckled. "As it happens, I used to think that 'subspace' was a pretty accurate name for the medium a lot of races use in their faster than light travel and communications. But then I met a rather odd hermit who taught me quite a bit about what I used to call 'subspace,' and I realized that calling the space outside of ours 'subspace' is wildly inaccurate, and more than a little misleading."

"Wait, outside of our space? How is that even possible?"

"Sam," Harry said warningly, "there's a lot you don't yet know about the universe. And as a matter of fact, that brings me to the reason I came here. I think we need to talk about our boundaries a bit. I'm going to be living on this base, in your territory, but I still need a little breathing room, even when you have a burning question that desperately needs an answer."

Sam sounded a bit defensive as she said, "You know, I was ordered to gather as much knowledge from you as I could. I intend to learn as much from you as I can, and that means asking a lot of questions."

Oh dear. It seemed that Harry would need to take drastic measures with this one. "Samantha," Harry said gently, "if I don't want you to learn anything from me, you won't. I would just make a polite request that I be allowed to leave this planet, and then I would leave."

Sam frowned. "But…I thought you agreed to stay."

"I did," Harry said, "but that was before I spent a day and a half answering your endless questions. I have nothing against a curious mind, Sam, but there is a point where I lose the patience to answer _all_ of your questions. And you need to stop asking questions occasionally, too. If you never take time to think about the answers I give you, you'll never have time to really learn."

There was a pause as Sam gathered her thoughts. Then she spoke tentatively, "I'm…not sure I understand. Are you upset that I ask too many questions or are you just trying to make me stop asking so many questions?"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Sam, I want you to ask questions. But surely even you realize that if you don't take some time to mull over new knowledge and realize exactly what it means for yourself, you'll never properly appreciate it."

Sam's brow furrowed, and her face got a rather thoughtful look about it. "I…I don't think I'd ever heard it put quite that way before. But the little girl who taught me about naquadah generators…I had to teach her that. And Colonel O'Neill helped too." Sam chuckled at the memory. "He actually broke all of the base protocols and took her to a school where another girl we resucued from off-world was attending. It…well, that's a long story actually. But I had to teach her that instead of using her knowledge to further my own, it was better for me to learn what she had to teach by figuring it out myself. I'm not sure she even really understood that until she went to school…"

"Well Sam," Harry said, "it sounds like you already know why I don't want to answer all of your questions right away. I'm sure that I could teach you everything you want to know, but I've found that teaching and learning are two different things. I aim to help you learn, not to teach you."

Sam's confused expression faded into a frown. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, Sam, that I intend to show you the basics. You're clearly intelligent enough to do the rest of my work for me. And if you're busy with that, it means I get to spend more time studying the devices that _I_ came here to study. Does that sound fair?"

Sam tilted her head as she considered that. "No, that actually sounds like you want to dump your work on me so that you can go do your own."

Harry smiled. "Sam, when has teaching ever been about anything else? I've yet to met a teacher who only taught because of their burning desire to impart knowledge. Even the best teachers are in the business of education for a deeper reason than that. Sometimes it's the money, often it's a desire to influence the youth of their community in a particular direction, but it's always more than _just_ the desire to teach." When Sam made no move to reply to that, Harry changed the subject. "Anyway, I don't think we should talk about my magic anymore just yet. You're welcome to do passive testing on any magic I do around the base, and of course you're welcome to ask questions if you see something that worries you. That said, I think I've rather soundly proven that you don't have the means to understand my magic yet, and so we should start with things that are a bit easier to understand. Things like this intriguing device you were examining when I came in."

"Well…" Sam hesitated, then blurted out, "Can I ask how you've been keeping us out of your room?"

Harry stared speculatively at her. He supposed that would worry her. She was a soldier posted to this base, after all, even if she was a lot of other things beside that. "As it happens, I'm not sure you'd be able to properly understand how my protections work just yet. And additionally, I don't know that I want you breaking down my protective wards." Sam's face fell. "But…I think I should help you get started on examining them anyway," Harry continued, "After all, the sooner you understand how they work, the sooner you can use them to reinforce your own equipment, and I think you might be able to see the value in that, hmm?"

At the almost greedy look on Sam's face, Harry hesitated. But then her boundless enthusiasm came back and she practically dragged him down to his quarters. The wizard smiled. Yes, this was the right choice. It would mean that he'd need to keep a closer eye on his wards, but that would be worth the benefits he'd reap in the long run.

When they got to his quarters, Harry noticed a balding man in a white lab coat examining the device that was outside of his door, presumably collecting the readings it had taken. He was using a bulky, tablet-like device as an interface of sorts. "What are you doing then?" Harry asked him.

The man started slightly, nearly dropping his tablet. "Oh, Sam," he began, "Who's this…" the poor scientist trailed off, having likely noticed the long, dark robe that Harry wore. They weren't _just_ for show, of course, but it did help him sometimes to look so obviously like a wizard.

Harry offered the man his hand to shake. "I'm Harry Potter, your newest resident wizard and general technology consultant."

The man looked at Harry hand, clearly confused. "Wait…if you're a technology consultant then how does wizardry play into anything?"

Harry sighed. This would require a demonstration. "Well, if has something to do with my innate ability to do _this."_ As he said the last word, Harry waved his extended hand and cast a simple charm, turning all of the man's clothing vibrant, glowing pink.

"What the-!" the man dropped his tablet and started patting uselessly at his now-luminescent lab coat.

"What did you do to him?" Sam asked sharply.

Harry grinned, staying perfectly relaxed under her threatening glare. "Sam, I did nothing to _him_. All I did was make his clothes glow pink. He's perfectly fine under there, though as you can see he's a bit shocked by the whole thing. That happens to most people when they experience their first magic."

Sam looked at the scientist, who was still patting awkwardly at his sleeves, and then back to Harry. "Can you reverse the effect?"

"Of course," Harry said, "but I don't think I will. After all, he was here to help you violate my privacy, and neither one of you bothered to get my permission before pointing your fancy sensors at my door. And as he's only going to be embarrassed by the experience, I don't really see a reason to spare him."

At this, the scientist finally stopped swatting at his sleeves. "Wait, what? You set up an unknown containment field on our base and expected us _not_ to try and figure out what you'd done?"

Harry smiled. "Actually, I fully expected you to mess with it. But I also rested secure in the knowledge that I would be able to easily retaliate when you did. And now that you've felt the full force of my retaliation, perhaps you'll reconsider the next time you're thinking about violating my privacy without permission." Harry paused, wondering whether or not he should go further, but in the end he couldn't resist. "Besides, now your clothes are an excellent object of study. The effect won't wear off for a few years, at least, and in that time you might be able to develop an understanding of what makes them glow pink."

The scientist, predictably, heard one piece of information more clearly than any of the others in Harry's explanation. "A few…years?" His face fell. "This was my favorite lab coat," the man muttered quietly."

Well, harry thought to himself, perhaps next time you'll recognize the value of other peoples' privacy. But he didn't say that out loud. "As it happens, I came down here to give Sam a few pointers, and permission to poke around my wards. So now that we've established when you should and shouldn't be messing with my privacy, how about I show you the way to do it properly?" The scientist was about to say something, but Harry cut him off. "Look, I value my privacy. Greatly. That said, you brought up a good point. This is your base. So yes, I will teach you how I'm maintaining my privacy. But you should also keep in mind that without the abilities I have, it'll probably be months before you come anywhere close to actually understanding the defenses I've set up here. You can either accept that, or you can go work on figuring out how I charmed your coat pink."

Harry noted that Sam was looking at him curiously, but he focused on the scientist. He'd already figured out how to work with Sam, but this would show him how many of the other scientists on the base he'd be able to work with.

Eventually, the man's shoulders slumped. "All right, I'll stick around while you show Dr. Carter the ropes. Someone has to keep up the work when she's off-world."

Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise, before quickly smiling and extending a hand to the scientist. "Well then, I do believe we failed to introduce ourselves properly. My name is Harry Potter, and I'll be working with you for the foreseeable future."

The scientist looked less than pleased, but took Harry's hand anyway. Harry attempted to ignore the glowing pink coat as the man introduced himself. "Dr. Lee, Astrophysics, and the Head of Science."

"Astrophysics, you say," Harry replied as they shook hands, "that's a rather broad field in a place like this. What do you normally focus on?"

Dr. Lee looked at Harry oddly, like no one had bothered to ask that before. "I…well, actually I kind of do a bit of everything. I've even dabbled in botany a bit, so that I understand what the biology department is working on with all of the off-world flora they study…" he trailed off, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly.

Harry smiled. "Well Dr. Lee, it's a pleasure to meet you. I never thought that focusing on just one thing was any fun myself. That's how a wizard like me ended up studying _technology_ of all things. Ah, if only the people back home could see me now..." Harry carefully avoided letting his face darken at the memories that thought dredged up. "Anyway, let's start with the basics of warding!"

As the two scientists exchanged a glance, Harry walked over to the entrance to his quarters and laid his palm on the surface of the door, subtly altering his wards to allow for better illustrations. Then he turned to see the Sam and Dr. Lee looking at him speculatively. He chuckled. "My setup here wasn't really calibrated for teaching purposes, so I had to make a few quick modifications. Don't worry, I didn't change anything important."

"Wait," Dr. Lee said, "you modified these…wards…just by touching the door?"

Harry nodded.

"But…how did you do that?" Sam asked

Harry shook his finger playfully at her. "If I wanted you to know that, I'd have told you already, Sam. Suffice it to say that I can easily interface with magic that I've cast, especially a simple ward scheme like this one." Sam didn't look happy with that, but Harry quickly pressed onward. "In any case, it'll be ages before you understand the mechanics of something that complicated, so I'll start at the beginning. A ward scheme's job is usually to protect something, either a location or an object, though in rare cases they can be keyed to specific individuals instead. Still, you need to remember that wards are designed to protect things. Any time you have a question about a ward, it'll inevitably come back to the ward's basic function as an automated magical guarding system. You with me so far?"

Sam nodded, but Dr. Lee asked, "Wait, you mean you can't use a ward for something other than protection?"

"You can always get creative," Harry said, "I've known of people who kept insulated boxes cold using wards, using the wards to 'preserve the cold environment' inside the box. The result was basically a magical refrigerator. But ward schemes are always strongest when they're simple, and all of the simple uses involve either defense of objects or defense of locations, with rare exceptions for the defense of specific people."

"Hang on," Sam said, "does that mean wards are more difficult to use for protecting people than for objects or places?"

Harry laughed out loud at that. "Of course not, Sam! It just means that the people you're protecting either need to keep the warded object close by, or they have to stay within the warded area. It's not unlike a sturdy wall or a set of armor. The only real difference is that it's magical, actually. Well, that and the fact that you're not always required to attach the wards to a physical anchor, like the wall you're protecting, or the armor you're enchanting. Of course, it always helps to attach the ward to something specific. That way they don't…wander off."

Sam was clearly trying to picture that situation in her head. "How would a ward…wander off?"

Harry grinned. "Actually, that's a pretty fascinating phenomenon when you're not in the middle of wondering where your protective enchantments have gone. But basically the wards, being unanchored, will go wherever they think they're needed most. Where that might be, exactly, varies depending on what they're supposed to protect. For example, there was once a ward scheme I was experimenting with that decided it needed to chase around every non-human in the area and give them whatever their equivalent of a wedgie was. And it got creative, too. Not all of the beings nearby had anything that even vaguely resembled underpants…"

Dr. Lee looked mildly disturbed. "What…what was that ward supposed to protect?"

"Hmm?" Harry hummed, coming out of his train of thought, "Oh, they were just supposed to be protecting all nearby humans, actually. But I made sure to seriously limit their capabilities, because I had no idea what would happen if they got out of control. And that caution paid off, too, because there wasn't a single non-human in a 10 kilometer radius who hadn't been 'attacked' by the time I dispelled them. Mobile ward schemes are _very_ difficult to control. That's why hardly anyone ever actually uses them. It's way easier to just enchant an object to move around, and then put wards on the object.

"But we're getting off topic here. I'm supposed to be teaching you how to use science against magic. So, if the conversation so far hasn't made this clear, you need to always keep one thing in mind when you're working with magic: expect the unexpected. Whatever's happening will make some sort of sense to someone, but just like incredibly advanced technology, it probably won't make sense to you until you've spent months researching it in a lab. And even then there's going to be something about it that you don't understand." Harry eyed the two scientists, who seemed to be absorbing his lecture pretty well, so he continued. "Now, I'm not here to teach you how to break wards, I'm here to teach you how to create wards of your own. If you figure out how to break my wards in the process, so be it. I'll just cast better wards and let you chew on those. But in the meantime, you'll have figured out how to do fun things like making whatever material you want about ten times more durable, among other things." Both scientists looked quite eager to learn that, so Harry decided to use that particular function to demonstrate the nature of ward schemes.

Tapping the wall behind him, Harry called up a visual representation of the reinforcement wards he'd placed on the walls of his room. Several glowing rune-like shapes appeared, but they clearly meant nothing to the either Sam or Dr. Lee. "These," Harry said, "are magical runes. I don't know their exact origin, and I don't know why they work the way that they do. All I know is that when someone who knows what they're doing asks magic for an explanation in text form, this is the result. Coincidentally, these runes correspond directly to the shapes that I used to draw with my wand back when I was learning to cast spells, because the act of drawing out the shape helped control the results of my magic. Again, I don't know why that works so well, but I do know that this is as close to the 'base code' of magic as anyone can get."

Dr. Lee was staring almost in awe at the runes, with their beautiful shapes and twisting intracacies. Sam, on the other hand, looked confused.

"I know these shapes…" she said, "Somewhere…I've seen these before, but I don't know where."

Harry had seen them too, when he studied the circuits of the Portal device this Earth seemed to call the 'Stargate.' It was one of the reasons he so strongly suspected that it used some form of magic in its inner workings. The circuits were at times shaped almost exactly like runes, as if they were directing non-magical energy into magical purposes. But he wanted Sam to make that connection on her own, so he instead redirected her attention. "Yes, they're fascinating. But they're also cheating." He waved his hand, and the wall was suddenly blank again. "Now, this device you've got here is probably decent for gaining an understanding of what kind of energy these wards are powered with, but if you want to figure out how it really works, you're going to need to figure out how to sample the energy without frying your machinery, and then how to manipulate the wards without them noticing and resisting your efforts as unrecognized interference. I'll give you a hint, you'll want to start by figuring out how to access and then interpret the runes I just showed you. But beyond that…I won't help you." The two scientists began to object, but Harry overrode their objections, saying, "I will, of course, help you figure out what your alien technology does, and I might even give you a few hints about which technology is best suited to probing my wards. But as I told Sam, it will benefit you more if you have to come up with answers on your own. If I just tell you how everything works, you haven't really earned the knowledge. And trust me, knowledge is always much better when it's earned, rather than given away for free."

The two scientists were skeptical, but Harry firmly stood his ground. "Look, I know you're curious, and I know you both have a good reason to be curious," he said, trying to calm them down so he could leave them to their own devices without being chased down by Sam's unending questions, "but I simply _will not_ tell you more, and that's just how it's going to be. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other places to be."

Then he walked off purposefully, deciding that it was high time he paid a visit to the infirmary. Thankfully, Sam didn't chase him down. A quick glance back showed that she was already working determinedly with the device that Dr. Lee had been taking readings from, examining the data the scientist had been collecting. Harry shuddered. If she decided to take his refusal to help as a challenge…well, he might end up hard-pressed to keep up with her. Geniuses on her level tended to be unstoppable when given the proper motivation.

Oh well. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it. For now, he had a Doctor to meet. Hopefully she'd be easier to deal with than Sam.

* * *

Harry looked around the infirmary with an approving eye. It was primitive, to be sure, but it was both neat and fully-stocked with a quiet atmosphere and an almost reassuring smell of disinfectant in the air. It wasn't really special, to his casual observation, but it was clearly run by competent medical professionals.

Shaking his head to clear his idle thoughts, Harry looked around to see if he could spot the woman in charge of this place. And there was no doubt in his mind that the woman he'd met before was in charge. Once she'd mastered her shock, she had easily and comfortably taken charge of her patient, and she was also apparently the first responder when a man had been injured in the field. If she wasn't the senior medical officer on the base, Harry would be quite shocked.

Spotting the woman in question, Harry walked over to the bedside of the man she was currently treating. To his mild surprise, he recognized the man as the one he'd rescued from the soldiers everyone around here seemed to call 'Jaffa.'

"How're you healing?" Harry asked, directing his question as much at the soldier as the doctor. Both looked surprised to see him, but the soldier spoke first.

"I'm doing good, thanks to you. From what the colonel said, you hauled my ass outta that situation and got me here in time for the doc here to work her magic." Harry smiled graciously, accepting the man's gratitude, but the doctor pursed her lips.

"Yes, but you're not back to 100% yet, so I don't want to hear anything about you so much as _thinking_ about getting out of this bed, do you hear me?"

The man gave an very put-upon look, but muttered an agreement. Harry grinned. "Doctors are the same everywhere, mate. They look after you even when no one else will, _because_ no one else will. Honestly, it took me a long while before I learned to appreciate that." Harry paused, letting that sink in, before turning to the doctor. "Now, it's occurred to me that we've not yet been introduced. In fact, I never even got a chance to properly learn the name of the man I saved, either." Harry looked expectantly at the soldier, who quickly introduced himself.

"I'm Senior Airman Simon Wells. It's really a pleasure to be able to thank you in person," the airman said, trying to extend his hand to shake, but falling back to the bed and wincing as soon as his shoulder lifted off of the bed. The doctor laid a warning hand on him.

"What did I tell you, Simon? _No_ aggravating that shoulder until it's healed, do you hear me?"

Harry smiled kindly. "Don't worry, you don't need to injure yourself over me. Just the fact that you're still alive to thank me is enough." Wells smiled at that. "Now," Harry said, turning to the doctor, "what's your name? Being thanked for heroics is great and all, and I did want to see how the man I saved is doing, but I actually came here to talk to you, Doctor."

The doctor looked rather surprised by this. "Oh," she said, "Well then Simon, if you can promise to relax here, it would appear that I have something to talk about with our resident wizard." After getting a reluctant agreement from the airman, the Doctor led Harry away from the bed. "So," she said once they were a respectful distance from her patients, "why did you want to talk to me?"

Harry smiled. "For one, it occurred to me that we never actually introduced ourselves earlier. Airman Wells over there was a bit more of a priority. So I thought I'd start by introducing myself." Harry held out his hand as he said, "I'm Harry Potter, your newest resident wizard."

Looking slightly skeptical, the Doctor shook his hand. "I'm Janet Frazier, the Chief Medical Officer on this base. Now, why did you want to see me?"

"Well, Janet," Harry began, "can I call you Janet?" she nodded. "Right. See, I actually make a habit of acquainting myself with the medical staff anywhere I go. See, I don't just idly claim that I'm a wizard, there are actual physiological differences that set wizards apart from non-magical folks. So, after a lot of accidents followed by frustrated doctors, I started nipping the problem in the bud by giving any doctor who might need to treat me a pre-emptive summary of those differences, and how they affect treatment."

Janet looked quite shocked as Harry spoke, but then a thoughtful expression came over her face. "These…physiological differences, do they cause your abilities?"

Oh dear. Even the doctors wanted to do research on him. Harry decided to grin and bear it, at least for now. "Actually it's the other way around. They're more like a result of my magic than a cause. I'm sure that you know as a medical professional just how inefficient the human body can be at times. Most of the differences between magical and non-magical people are just little things that make the healing process faster, or slightly enhance useful things like reflexes and endurance. It's really nothing major, but there are a couple of really odd things that might trip you up if I accidentally blow myself up and you need to treat me."

Janet frowned. "Is it…likely that you'll blow yourself up?"

"Oh, no," Harry reassured her, "I haven't had that happen in years. I'm much more careful now than I was in my youth. It was just the first thing that came to mind."

"Right…" the woman said skeptically, "well then, let's get started with metabolism. Is that different from normal?"

"As it happens, it is," Harry said, and from there the discussion quickly turned into a discussion of the finer points of wizarding physiology. Janet listened attentively to everything Harry's every word, and the wizard had the feeling that General Hammond would be getting a full report on this. She even asked if he was willing to undergo a standard physical examination to "establish a baseline." The fact that this included several machines scanning him and a blood sample, she explained, was due to the fact that a standard physical on the base was usually given to ensure that the people coming back through the Stargate were the same people who had left, and that they weren't under alien control. He was sure that wouldn't stop her from using the data she collected on him to further any research she might be doing on unusual human physiologies, but that didn't bother him so much. Anything she learned from that research would help her if she ever needed to treat him, and Janet struck him as an incredibly honest woman, not the sort to bandy about a patient's confidential information unnecessarily.

When all was said and done, Janet seemed almost fond of Harry, going so far as to invite him to eat lunch with her sometime. He chalked this up to the likelihood that, as a military doctor, she was used to uncooperative patients, not people who willingly submitted themselves to physical examinations. He left the infirmary confident that, should anything go wrong, he had his bases covered. And so, eagerly cracking his fingers, he set his course for the General's office, hoping to finally get his hands on some of this 'Ancient' technology to study.

* * *

 **A/N: Yep, this chapter took longer. The reasons are many and boring, but hey, the chapter came out, and it's here now. If I hear whining, I will develop a sudden and inexplicable deafness in both ears at the same time.**

 **In other news, I _should_ have chapters out about once a week, but I still make no promises of a stricter schedule. I'll write when I write, and when I finish a chapter, I'll put it up as soon as it's through editing. Maybe as I settle into a more regular schedule I'll start releasing regularly, instead of whenever a chapter's done, but that's not going to happen just yet.**

 **Anyway, that's all for now.**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	4. The Database

**A/N: So, it seems that a lot of you think Harry's being overly trusting of the SGC, what with his willingness to "teach" them about wards and trust Janet with his medical information. Or at least, that's what a majority of the early reviews on the last chapter were about. So, to clarify, Harry barely told Sam and Dr. Lee anything. He gave them a basic overview of ward theory and then offered absolutely no helpful advice on how to actually crack a ward system. He's not going to just teach the SGC the secrets of magic, for the simple reason that he's not stupid. Still, he's giving them enough to build a positive, trusting relationship. I don't want to turn this into a Harry vs. SGC story, so my Harry is smart enough to foster a cordial relationship and help the SGC out a bit so they won't get super-suspicious of him.**

 **I'm sorry if my MC being a nice person offends you. Really I am. But I like having characters that aren't jerks in my stories, so if you want a rude MC…go read** _ **Havok Side of the Force**_ **by Tsu Doh Nimh. Harry is a total prick in that story, and I think you'll like it. It's a great story all around, and Harry is generally justified in his douchery. Still, this Harry is a very different Harry, and he's not a jaded veteran or anything even remotely like that, so he's not going to act like one. He's a pretty normal guy, if a bit geeky about fancy technology. If that bothers you, don't bother bothering me about it. From this point on if you bother me about it I'll ignore you, since I've addressed the issue here.**

 **We good? Good.**

 **Also, a guest asked whether the Nox will be making an appearance. They will not. They're content to hide on their planet and be complete pacifists, and there's just no reason for Harry to even try to visit them.**

 **And now for your feature presentation! (Does anyone else remember those VHS ads and how they politely told you they were done telling you what to buy? Just me? Okay.)**

* * *

Harry was neck-deep in the fried dialing device he'd been given to study when Sam interrupted him.

"Harry," she said simply, "I think we need your help."

That got his attention. During the few weeks he'd spent at the SGC he'd been treated with respect, but also with a great deal of caution. They knew that he was capable of taking out a whole squad of Jaffa without breaking a sweat, and they'd only taken him in because he had helped one of them out of a pinch. He'd given them a few pointers in passing, mostly to Sam about her many alien gadgets. But now they were asking for his help. That was either very good, because it gave him an opportunity to show that he had no hidden agenda…or it was very bad, and they'd gotten into the kind of trouble that only a very powerful wizard could get them out of.

"What is it?" Harry asked, carefully extracting himself from the innards of the dialing device.

"It's…it's Colonel O'neill. He's the leader of my team. He downloaded the knowledge of the Ancients into his head, and…and I think it's going to kill him." Sam said the last part so quietly that Harry barely caught it.

Harry spared the dialing device a longing glance. Well, it would still be there after he'd taken care of this. A man's life was more important than a bit of research, no matter how groundbreaking the research was.

"All right," Harry said, "take me to him."

As Sam led Harry to the infirmary, she slowly explained a few more details of the situation. The device responsible was apparently called the 'Repository of Knowledge,' and this wasn't the first time that the colonel had been through this exact same process, but even though Colonel O'Neill had been aware of the consequences this time, he'd still taken one for the team to avoid letting such valuable information fall into enemy hands. The last time, the colonel had managed to find the Asgard, who had erased the knowledge his mind and saved him from brain death. This time, however, they had tried and failed to contact the Asgard. Harry privately suspected that the Asgard might be ignoring their plight in an attempt to see whether the SGC could solve the problem on their own, but he didn't voice that opinion. Sam's assertion that the Asgard had problems of their own to deal with was just as likely.

When they ran into the colonel, he was walking purposefully away from the infirmary.

"Sir, shouldn't you be…" Sam began to say, but at the colonel's look, she fell silent.

"There's nothing they can do in there right now, Carter. All I want to do right now is go home, enjoy a beer, and watch the latest episode of my favorite TV show."

Harry considered that. It seemed the man was at peace with his impending 'death,' and wanted to live what little time he had as fully as possible.

"But sir," Sam said, "Shouldn't we be trying to see if there's anything we can do-"

"Sam," the colonel said, cutting her off, "Dr. Frazier just spent a good ten minutes telling me there was nothing any Earthly technology can do to help, just like last time. What were you planning on doing?"

Harry saw his opportunity to cut in. "You make use of alien technology, of course."

Sam and the colonel both started a bit, having clearly forgotten that he was there. "What do you mean by that?" O'Neill asked.

"Well, I suppose we haven't been introduced yet, so you wouldn't know. My name is Harry Potter, and quite separately from being a wizard, I've spent the last few centuries studying every piece of alien technology I could get my hands on. I'm not going to claim that I can help you until I've taken a look, but I think I have a few advantages that Dr. Frazier doesn't."

The colonel gave Harry a long look, taking in Harry's wildly unkempt hair, his long, dark robe, and even sparing a glance for the faded lightning bolt scar on Harry's forehead.

After it became clear that the colonel wasn't going to say anything, Harry asked, "Will you at least give me a shot? I'm actually quite eager to see this 'knowledge of the Ancients' you've got in your head, if you'll let me take a look. These Ancients are quite fascinating, really. Their technology does things that I didn't think were possible. If the methods they used are in their head, then you can bet your ass I'll do my best to get them out." When the colonel looked decidedly uncomforted by that, Harry quickly added, "Oh, and don't worry, I won't hurt you. Sam here seems to like you, and I'd hate to get on her bad side. Something tells me she'd shoot me if anything happened to you on my watch." Sam gave Harry a sideways look as he said that, but didn't argue with him. He took that to mean that he'd judged her accurately.

"You're right about one thing." the colonel said, "We haven't been introduced. I'm Colonel O'Neill, with two L's." The man extended his hand.

Harry shook the colonel's hand. "Two L's, huh. Is that significant?"

O'Neill smiled. "It's just that there's another Colonel O'Neil in the Air Force with one L, but he's got no sense of humor. Sometimes people get us confused."

"Right," Harry said, resolving to wonder about that tidbit later, "Well then, how about we get back into the infirmary so I can take a look at you. I mean, I can actually do this anywhere, but Janet might want to keep an eye on the proceedings anyway, and I like keeping the local doctors happy as a general rule."

In short order, O'Neill was lying back on a bed, and Janet was standing by, slightly bemused.

"I thought you were going home, Colonel," she said in a light tone.

The colonel, apparently used to such ribbing, easily replied, "Oh, you know me, I'm a glutton for punishment."

Janet pursed her lips, but didn't say anything more.

"Right," Harry said, "For reference, what I'm about to do is called Legilimency, which is basically reading your mind using magic. However, I'm quite experienced at this, so I'll be able to avoid looking into your mind, O'Neill, and focus on this downloaded knowledge you acquired from the repository. Initially, I'll just be taking a look to see how much you've got crammed in there, and how difficult it'll be to extract it for study. Once I've done that, I know several painless methods of extraction, though some of them can get a bit complex if they have to interface a human mind with technology. Does that sound good?"

There was a pause. "Well," O'Neill said, "it doesn't sound bad."

Harry chuckled. He was quickly growing fond of the colonel's dry sense of humor. "All right then, let's see what you've got in there."

Harry didn't get his wand out. For something as intimate as Legilimency, he'd found that foregoing his wand afforded him more dexterity. So he simply placed his hand on O'Neill's forehead and dove into the man's mind.

Then he jumped right the hell back out of O'Neill's mind, yelping slightly and shaking his hand, which felt rather painfully as though it had been burnt. Touching the colonel's mind was akin to touching the sun, there was so much information flying around at high speed. Harry was glad he hadn't used a wand, the wood in a wand would probably have burst into cinders on contact.

"What's wrong?" Janet said, moving immediately to check O'Neill's vitals.

"Oh, it's nothing," Harry said, quietly sending bit of numbing magic to his hand, "I just wasn't expecting 'the knowledge of the Ancients' to mean 'literally every single scrap of data they ever accumulated through any means.' Honestly O'Neill, I'm amazed you're still conscious with all of that information running through your mind. Most humans I know of would be brain-dead within an hour. Even I wouldn't be able to take the strain on my own, and I can use magic to greatly reinforce my mind."

"But is there something you can do for him?" Sam asked sharply.

"Well, yes, there is, actually," Harry said. "I'd prefer not to, but I actually have just the thing for this situation. I came up with it…oh, a while back when I realized that even my magic couldn't hold all of the memories of a 200-year-old wizard. It's a sort of…magical memory buffer that I have so that my brain doesn't overload and shut down, much like what will happen to O'Neill here if I don't figure out a way to help him."

"Hang on," O'Neill said, "you sound like you're not going to help me."

"I do, don't I?" Harry said, mentally activating the very buffer he'd been talking about to calculate and consider possible solutions as he talked, "But you have to understand, I'm rather reliant on this thing, and it's much more than _just_ a memory buffer. It's kind of…well, giving it up would be like asking you to give up all of your arms and legs, and that's not counting the fact that my brain would go into overload pretty quickly without it. If I could just…oh. I'm stupid." Harry flicked his wand out of his sleeve and conjured a roughly smartphone-shaped rectangle of diamond-tritanium glass.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked.

Harry paused, considering the angles. Then he handed her the conjured glass and conjured another one, which he began to enchant. "This is called diamond tritanium glass, or at least that's what I call it. It's incredibly strong, but unfortunately a bit brittle. Where it really shines is its capacity for data storage, which is why I used it to make my memory buffer device. Imagine that it's a hard drive, except it can hold…" Harry paused, realizing that they might not know what a terabyte was yet. "Sam, do you know what a terabyte is?"

"Yes, it's 1000 gigabytes, why?"

"Because that little piece of glass in your hand, aside from being bulletproof, can hold about 15 trillion terabytes of data, if you know what you're doing."

Sam looked at the glass in her hands with a new respect. "Fifteen…trillion…"

"Terrabytes, yes," Harry said as he finished casting the spells which would turn his slab of diamond-tritanium glass into a basic memory buffer with a little more than half that much space on it. Then he copied the user interface from his own device, sending it a brief mental message instructing it to lay low and not scare off the humans he was going to give it to. Looking up from his work, he saw Sam staring at the piece of glass in her hand with a reverent look most would save for divine miracles.

"Sam, keep in mind that all it does is store the data. Unless humanity experiences a massive advance in technology, I don't think you'll be able to use that as much more than a compact storage device right now. Heck, this is something you need to learn for yourself, which means I'm not going to help you figure it out and you probably won't even figure out the best way to crystallize the data right away. In any case, that's a project for another day. It's just…well, I've been a bit stingy lately, and I figured you could use an occasional distraction from trying to figure out my wards."

Sam looked at him with an unreadable expression. "Thank you," she said quietly.

Harry smiled. "You're quite welcome. Now, if I might bring us back to the matter at hand, I've just enchanted this device to act as a memory buffer for you, O'Neill. I also added in a sort of user interface to help sort through it all. It's basically an artificial intelligence, so don't be surprised when it starts talking to you. Now all you need to do is touch this to activate it, and then it'll automatically store all of the data that's overloading your unconscious mind right now." A thought occurred to Harry. "Heck, if you wanted, I could enchant it so that once you download the information, anyone can use this device to search through the ancient's database. Don't take this the wrong way, Colonel, but you don't look like a man of science to me. It might be better to let someone like Sam try to interpret the knowledge of the Ancients."

O'Neill briefly considered that before saying, "Yeah, let's do that. I didn't much like being the interpreter last time."

"Alright!" Harry added the appropriate enchantments. "If you just take this, you'll be holding all of the knowledge of the Ancients in your hand, instead of your head. Won't that be a relief?" he held out the device for O'Neill to take.

Without any ceremony or pomp, O'Neill took the device from Harry. Then the colonel tilted his head. "I don't feel any different," he said.

"You wouldn't," Harry said, "You weren't yet feeling the effects of the knowledge in your head. If you want proof that I'm not pulling one over on you, just think 'Help, please,' and the user interface will activate."

O'Neill frowned, but apparently did as instructed, because his eyes suddenly went wide. "She's…ready and waiting to assist me in any way possible?"

"Well yeah. You asked for help, and I created this assistant specifically to be polite and highly effective at what it does."

O'Neill took that in. Then he asked, "Why does she sound like Carter?"

"The voice is picked from your own head. I won't go into details about how the voice is chosen, because it's a really complex magical process that I myself don't fully understand, but I do know that the voice the interface uses is always someone you trust implicitly." Harry also suspected that the user's mind also sought out the smartest-sounding voice it could think of, and possibly searched for the most comforting voice it knew. But that was only a theory, since O'Neill was the first person beside Harry to use the interface.

After a lengthy pause, Harry said, "So, what do you guys plan on doing with the knowledge of the Ancients? You now quite literally have it at your fingertips, and I must say that I'd at least like to know how the fruits of my labor are going to be used."

O'Neill and Sam exchanged a meaningful look. "I think we should talk about that with General Hammond," O'Neill said, looking at Harry as though he expected an objection.

"All right then," Harry said, "let's go talk to him. Unless he's busy right now?" Janet, Sam and O'Neill all gave him odd looks. "What? I promised you guys that since you found this knowledge I'd let you keep control over it. That doesn't change the fact that I desperately want a chance to study it at the soonest opportunity. The General's the one I'd have to go through anyway, isn't he? All I want is a seat at the meeting."

O'Neill sighed. "I supposed I do owe you one now. That'll get you your seat at the meeting, but I can't promise you anything else."

"Thank you so much!" Harry exclaimed. Then he realized that he was going a bit over the top and backed down a bit. "Besides, I figured I'd have to persuade my way into studying that information anyway. For the amount of effort it took me to save your life, I'd say that a seat at a classified planning meeting is definitely your favor repaid in full."

O'Neill eyed Harry suspiciously, but soon enough he and Sam had led Harry to the briefing room outside of General Hammond's office. Hammond was already there, talking to a skinny white guy with round glasses and a very, very well-muscled black man. The three men were clearly surprised that he had been brought into such a sensitive briefing. Harry decided to nip that problem in the bud by going straight to the top.

"General, I've just fixed Colonel O'Neill's little problem, downloaded all of the Ancient knowledge into a device that anyone can use, and I think I've earned a place at this briefing. Probably not all of your briefings, but you could say I have a vested interest in how, exactly, you use the knowledge that I've just put in your hands."

"And where is this device?" The general asked.

"I have it, sir," Sam said, holding up the diamond tritanium glass that now held the knowledge of the Ancients.

"That's it? You fit the knowledge of the Ancients into…that?" The general sounded incredibly skeptical.

" _That_ is DTG, or diamond-tritanium glass," Harry explained. "And it's the best data storage medium I've ever discovered, so yes, I fit everything into that. All told, it was about 6 trillion terabytes, but that's well within the capabilities of the diamond-tritanium glass."

General Hammond didn't seem to know what to say to that, but Sam spoke up. "Sir, he's telling the truth. He installed a mental interface so that we could see for ourselves, and I've been confirming that it does indeed have knowledge that I would expect to find in an Ancient database."

"Really?" Harry asked, "What kind of stuff were you looking for?"

Sam hesitated, looking at the General.

"It's all right, Major. If he really did get the knowledge of the Ancients out of Colonel O'Neill's head, he's earned the right to know what we wanted it for in the first place."

Sam looked ready to start an explanation right there, but Harry stopped her.

"Yes," he said, "that's all well and good, but how about we sit down before we get to the serious explaining? If I've learned anything about you Sam, it's that your explanations are incredibly long and detailed. I'd prefer not to have to stand the whole time."

Sam gave him a bit of a stinkeye for that. She and Harry had talked at great length whenever she managed to corner him, and every single time he'd had to curb her natural tendency to go overboard. Nevertheless, everyone seated themselves without further drama.

"The first thing I looked for was the lost city of the Ancients," Sam said, "and even though I had to clarify what I meant so that Harry's interface program understood what I was looking for, I'm pretty sure I've found it. But there's a problem."

"Um," Harry interjected, "quick refresher since I'm not up to date on events in this reality. Why do you need this lost city?"

The skinny guy with the glasses took that question. "We believe that it has the offensive and defensive capabilities to save Earth from a being called Anubis. He's…complicated, but the short version is that we're pretty sure he's going to try to destroy Earth in the near future, and we're hoping that the lost city of the Ancients has some means of stopping him."

Wait...they weren't looking for just any lost city. "Wait, you mean _Ancients_ ancients…of course you do, that's why you wanted their repository of knowledge…so you think there's a whole _city_ of them out there somewhere?" This was huge. The only evidence Harry had seen pointed to these Ancients, whoever they were, being long since extinct. But if he could actually _meet_ some…

"It is the _Lost_ City of Atlantis for a reason, and we don't actually know what that reason is," the skinny guy said, "But if their city is anywhere near as advanced as the other Ancient technology we've discovered, it might be our only hope of ever stopping Anubis. He's…well he knows a lot of tricks that the ancients knew because he's…sort of like one of them, in a way. Their lost city might be the only way to stop him."

"Hang on," Harry said, "if he knows their tricks, why would anything in their city help against him?"

Here, Sam took over answering Harry's questions. "From what we can tell so far, the Ancients don't like Anubis much, so he has to be careful what he does. He's been sticking to heavily modified Goa'uld technology so far. But if he got his hands on actual Ancient technology…"

"He'd be unstoppable," Harry finished for her, acknowledging the grim thought. "I presume he can't be reasoned with, either?" The grim faces around the table answered that question. "Have you tried reasoning with him? I mean, you must have if you're this desperate to stop him, but what was the result?"

Everyone exchanged awkward glances. Eventually, it was O'Neill that spoke up. "We haven't exactly tried negotiating with this _particular_ goa'uld, but we've tried to negotiate with the goa'uld before. Theoretically, they agreed to leave this planet alone, but Anubis wasn't present for those negotiations."

The skinny guy picked up the trail of thought as O'Neill left it off, "They like to think of themselves as gods, you see, and they can't tolerate us 'rebelling' against them. It's…bad for their image. Especially since we've been fighting against them and survived for so long. If Anubis comes to Earth right now, there won't be anything we can do to escape his wrath."

"I see," Harry said simply. And he did. He'd been pretty sure that these people weren't looking for weapons to conquer the Earth or anything, but it never hurt to get the whole story anyway. And their story was pretty dire. "So, what can I do to help you?"

That caught everyone off guard, Harry could tell.

"What do you mean?" the General asked.

"I've gotten pretty fond of this Earth in the past few weeks, and I'd hate to see it destroyed," Harry said, "You people have been mighty nice to me, took me in, fed me, gave me a place to stay, even gave me a bit of Ancient technology to study when I asked for it. In my book, that means I should help out when you suddenly end up facing a world-ending threat. So, what can I do to help?"

Just as everyone started to look hopeful, Sam spoke up. "Well, unless you know how to travel to another galaxy, I'm afraid you can't do a whole lot. That's the problem I mentioned earlier. I found the gate address for Atlantis, but it's an eight-symbol address like the one we have for the Asgard. I'm pretty sure that can only mean that it's in another galaxy, and we don't have the power resources to open a Stargate to another galaxy."

"That doesn't sound right," Harry muttered to himself. Then he clicked his tongue twice and said, "Interface, what kind of power sources did the Ancients use for intergalactic gate travel?"

There was a pause, during which all of the SGC personnel looked at him like he was crazy. Then, from the DTG in Sam's hand, schematics popped up for a cylindrical, glowing yellow object with one end that split and tapered into several crystalline points. Harry examined the accompanying text, which was in Ancient, and probably the technical specifications. One subtle translation charm later, it all read like English to him. "I see…" he said aloud, "that's very clever. I could be totally wrong here, but I think it generates power from…some sort of artificial node of magic." He fell silent, trying to figure out exactly what the ancient diagram depicted. Was it drawing energy from a higher dimension? A magical dimension? That was the only thing that made sense, but-

"How did you do that?" Sam asked, halting his train of thought.

"Huh?" Harry stared at her dumbly. "Oh, you mean how I called up the specifications? It's voice activated. If you click your tongue twice and then say, 'Interface,' followed by a query, it'll give you whatever you're asking for. I figured that'd be easier than having to use mental commands, but then you went ahead and used mental commands anyway, so I guess I needn't have bothered."

Before Harry could again lose himself in the beauty of this new power source, the General spoke up. "And what exactly did you find?"

"This?" Harry looked at the specifications. "It says here it's called a…potentia. It's a power source capable of outputting nearly limitless amounts of power for…quite a long time, actually. The only drawback is that it's sort of like a non-rechargable battery and once all its power is used up, it's useless. Still, this should easily solve your power problems if you can get your hands on one."

The skinny guy spoke up, saying, "From what I can tell, he's telling the truth. The writing around the hologram is a lot of highly technical specifications, but it does seem to be talking about a power source. If we can find one of these, and it really is as powerful as you say, it would definitely be enough to get us an intergalactic gate connection."

As everyone considered that, Harry noticed O'Neill staring at him. Harry raised a questioning eyebrow at the man, tacitly inviting him to speak. Taking the invitation for what it was, O'Neill asked, "Why don't you just magic us up one of these potent things just like you conjured up that diamond…glass…stuff?"

Harry smiled at O'Neill's pointed ignorance of the exact technical terms. "Well, as it happens I might be able to do just that, if I can study these schematics a little bit more. But you'd have to keep in mind that it's a much more complicated device, so I might not actually be able to synthesize one on my own. And even if I do, I'll only share my potentia with you for use in the immediate defense of your world. This means that I'd let you use it to take the Stargate to this city of the Ancients, but from there you'd be on your own."

"Why?" O'Neill asked simply.

"Why won't I help you more?" Harry tilted his head as he considered the question. "I won't help you any more because you quite clearly don't need my help. I mean, yes, you have a power crisis, but there's several solutions that don't involve me that are available to you, and you should investigate those first. I don't plan on sticking around here forever. As a matter of fact, I'm much more interested in this city of the ancients than I am sticking around this base much longer. Don't get me wrong, you've been great to me, but I'm not a stay-in-one-place kind of guy. Even if I do find what I'm looking for here, I'd be gone pretty quick for reasons I'll not get into. So I'm not going to do anything that leaves you dependent on me. That would be incredibly irresponsible. And if you're relying on a power source that I would definitely take with me whenever I leave, that easily qualifies as being dependent on me."

O'Neill considered that briefly, then said, "But why can't you just find us one of these potent things and give it to us?"

Harry thought about that for a second, then sighed. "I suppose it is largely intellectual at this point, isn't it? Hell, among other things, you've got the schematics to build your own, as soon as you can figure out how to set up the proper facilities. Right, I'll tell you what. If you can tell me how you'd go about finding one without me, I'll find a way to get you a potentia of your own. Does that sound fair?"

O'Neill and Hammond exchanged a brief glance.

"All right," General Hammond said, "do you have any suggestions?"

Harry remained pointedly silent. This was a test of their ingenuity, as much as anything else. He could already think of one very simple way they could find a Potentia of their own. Heck, he was surprised that Sam hadn't thought of it already.

"I…I think I have something sir," Sam said. "I think that…well, I was just wondering where we could find Potentia of our own, and now the database is…listing out locations?"

Or maybe Sam was so talented that she'd come across the answer by accident. Harry suppressed the urge to snort in amusement. Intelligent to a fault, she was.

"Wait," the skinny guy said, unfolding his arms, "you mean like, gate addresses?"

"I…think so," Sam said, "yeah, these are gate addresses. I guess I could write them down…"

"Actually," Harry interjected, "I can add printing capabilities if you want. That way you wouldn't have to write everything down."

Sam glanced at the general, but he didn't object, so she slid the DTG memory buffer across the table to Harry. He slipped his wand out, cast a few spells to allow it to conjure paper with configurable printed ink, then he passed it back. "Just picture what you want to print out and then think, 'Print.'"

"Right," Sam said, picking the device back up. Suddenly, a piece of paper appeared on the table in front of her, covered in strange symbols that looked like the ones on the Stargate and its dialing device.

"Woah," Sam said. "Wait…where'd the paper come from?"

Harry nearly facepalmed. "Sam, it's a magical device. The paper was conjured using a bit of ambient energy."

"More importantly, are those the gate addresses?" O'Neill asked.

Sam, who was looking them over, nodded. "Yes. I think we've even tried to dial a few of them. I'd have to check the dialing logs to be sure, but we could start sending MALPs and teams through the gate to check any of the addresses where we get a connection."

"Well," Harry said, "that sounds like an excellent plan. In fact, it sounds like you won't need me at all. I mean, there's no immediate threat to the planet, right? And there has to be at least one of those addresses that's got a still-working Potentia at it. At this rate, it sounds like I'll have to ask _you_ for a ride to the city of the Ancients."

"After all you've done for us, I think I might just be able to swing that for you, Mr. Potter," General Hammond said.

"All right then. It sounds like Sam has some homework to do, and now that you've told me what your plans are for the knowledge of the Ancients, I'm sure there's some things you'd like to discuss without the alien wizard present." No one openly agreed, but Harry could tell that everyone in the room was glad that he'd suggested he leave so that they didn't have to. "If that's all, I think I'll head back to that dialing device. Who knows, maybe it has something they don't use anymore in the city of the Ancients!"

With that Harry left the room, nodding a goodbye to Sam and O'Neill as he went. As he walked back to his lab, he mentally activated his own interface. _Inter, did you get everything?_

 _I got it all, boss. 6 trillion terabytes puts me at a little under half capacity, and it took a while to transfer it all over, but you were near the other device for more than long enough. I am now fully equipped with all of the knowledge from the Ancient database._

Harry smiled.

* * *

 **A/N: Ta-da! What, did you think that Harry** _ **wouldn't**_ **find a way to get his hands on the Ancient database? You clearly don't know the man very well. ;P**

 **Yes, my posting schedule's highly irregular, but maybe it'll settle down sometime.**

 **Maybe.**

 **At any rate, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to go two weeks without posting again. That's just not good for getting me more readers, and more readers means (hopefully) more useful criticism.** _ **Right?**_

 ***glares pointedly at the haters***

 **…**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	5. Authority Figures

**A/N: So, a lot of you have questions about Harry giving the whole Ancient Database to the SGC like he apparently did in the last chapter. That's a good thing, it means you're paying attention. I mean, Harry would never do something so rash, and I've put effort into making that part of his character readily apparent, so it definitely shouldn't seem right that he just gives a fledgeling race barely starting their information age all the knowledge of a race that was on the verge of ascending into godhood.**

 **But don't worry, everything is not what it seems, and Harry didn't quite give them** _ **access**_ **to all the knowledge of the Ancients. He didn't steal the database, either, which is a point I could have made more clear in the last chapter, but I'm lazy so I'm just stating it outright here. Harry downloaded a copy, he didn't steal the Ancient Database.**

 **Now, let's get back to the story!**

* * *

Harry had only been studying the Ancient Database for 12 hours so far. Of course, he'd also only had access to the Database for 12 hours. Even with all of his Occlumency, however, he'd barely gotten through 1,000 terabytes of the stored data. According to a quick calculation that meant it would take him around a million and a half years to get through it all, and he wasn't sure he could process the data any faster without overloading his brain and effectively killing himself.

He needed to change tactics, or he would be too old to care by the time he found what he was looking for. So, instead of trying to learn it all for himself, he decided to let his interface, who he had rather lazily christened 'Inter,' do most of the work.

 _Inter,_ he thought, activating the interface, _I'm definitely going to need your help with this one._

 _I was wondering how long it would take you to realize that, boss. I mean, you're good, but no one's good enough to take in 6 trillion terabytes of data all at once._

Harry wasn't sure whether or not his interface was mocking him. _No one but you, I presume?_ The wizard asked.

 _Not even me, boss. Sure, I can call up any of the data off of the DTG drive at a moment's notice, but even I can't actually process it all. I really am just a living Google in your head now. Back when it was just your thoughts in here I could process everything, sure. But this isn't just the next level up from there, it's the difference between the width of a planet and the width of the entire observable universe. This 'Database' is_ _ **big.**_

Harry grimaced. Apparently this wasn't going to be easy. _All right then, just call up everything you can find on the ways their technology uses what I'd call magic, and anything on their circuitry that looks like runes._

Inter stayed suspiciously silent.

 _Inter? What's going on in there?_

 _Boss…that pulled up about 10,000 hits, and I'm pretty sure they're all relevant to your research._

Great, Harry thought to himself. Well, it's not like he'd expected this to be easy. _Right then, feed them to me in random order. We've gotta start somewhere._

And so Harry began the very, very slow process of learning the particulars of Ancient hardware and circuitry.

* * *

24 hours after later, General Hammond received a phone call informing him that he'd been reassigned. After making a few arrangements of his own and going through the lengthy process of informing all of his senior staff of the impending change in command, Hammond decided to make a personal stop by Harry's lab to inform the wizard of the changing hierarchy.

What he found was surprising, to say the least. Harry sat cross-legged on a low table, facing a wall. The wall was absolutely covered in some strange writing that Hammond had never encountered, and he'd seen samples of all the alien writings his SG teams had come across. Even more intriguing, several metallic components were floating in midair in front of the wizard, assembling and disassembling themselves into various circuit-like shapes that the general couldn't make any sense of.

Hammond was so completely caught off guard by the display that he stood there, watching the writing flicker and change as the bits of metal fitted themselves into more and less complex structures for nearly five minutes. Then, remembering why he'd come in the first place, he cleared his throat to get Harry's attention.

The effect was instantaneous. The writing on the wall flickered and disappeared, the metallic pieces fell to the floor with a smash, and Harry himself tried to jump off of the table. Unfortunately for the wizard, he caught his foot on something and he fell to the floor with a painful-sounding _thud._

General Hammond suddenly felt as though he'd walked in on a newbie doing something he knew his CO would disapprove of, and felt his mouth twitch with amusement.

"Am I interrupting something?" he asked, bemused.

"…owwwwwww…" Harry groaned. The wizard's body lifted slightly off the ground, allowing him to look at Hammond. "Whaddaya want?"

Hammond raised an eyebrow. "Well, I came down here to talk, but I suppose I could call you later if I've come at a bad time."

Harry eyed Hammond blearily for several seconds, and then began picking himself off of the floor. "No, no. I can talk now. I was just…a bit caught up in my research."

"That was some pretty interesting research," Hammond commented.

Harry shrugged, but didn't offer an explanation.

Resolving to make a note of the incident for his replacement, Hammond got back to the matter at hand. "Well, I just came down to inform you that I'm being reassigned. There's a lot of complex politics involved, but my replacement is a civilian doctor, a woman named Elizabeth Weir. I don't know much about her, but I hear she was appointed at the President's recommendation, so she should be all right."

Harry took that in carefully. "So…they're replacing an air force general…with a civilian?"

"Yes, they are."

"Why?"

Hammond hesitated. He really didn't want to get into the delicate political situation. "I'm not sure as of yet. There's been a bit of upheaval lately, as we've only just begun to inform other major world powers of our Stargate operations. I suspect this may be related, but I won't know more until I get to Washington."

Harry's eyes pierced deep into Hammond's as the wizard stared the General down. Remembering that Harry had said he could read minds, Hammond felt a flicker of worry, but then he dismissed it. If the wizard wanted to read his mind, he'd already had ample opportunity.

Finally, Harry's stare abated, and the wizard extended a hand. "Well General Hammond, it's been a pleasure working with you."

Hammond shook it. "The pleasure was all mine, I assure you. I hope my reassignment doesn't affect relations between Stargate Command and yourself, but understand that I will still do my utmost to keep your friendship, even from Washington. You saved the lives of two of my men, one of whom heads arguably the most important team on this base. I won't forget that."

Harry smiled. "That means a lot to me, General. Thank you for taking the time to say goodbye in person."

As Hammond left, he considered everything that he knew about the wizard who called himself Harry Potter. Harry seemed quite nice, open, and honest, but underneath that the man had secrets. What _research_ he'd been doing when Hammond had interrupted, for example. Hammond was a fair judge of character, and every instinct he had screamed that the wizard meant them no harm, but the military man in him still had to wonder what, exactly, Harry's secrets were.

Harry Potter was a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, hiding behind a wizard's robe. Still, the question remained; who was he underneath it all?

…

As the General left, Harry cursed to himself. He'd been so caught up in the Ancient Database that he'd forgotten to ensure his privacy. Quickly inserting a mental bookmark in the database, Harry set about cleaning up his lab and setting up several wards that he could use to ensure his privacy the next time he wanted to study the Database.

Then he hightailed it to the cafeteria. He hadn't stopped to eat in 36 hours, and he was _starving._

* * *

It was 9:37 on the Monday after General Hammond had told Harry he'd be leaving. Harry stood outside of what had been the General's door, which didn't yet have a new nameplate. He'd set up a very minor trip-wire ward to detect the first female presence to enter the office. It wasn't foolproof, but he suspected given the timing that he'd detected his new 'boss,' and that the woman had only just arrived. Harry's more mischievous side hoped that his uncanny timing would knock the woman off-guard and allow him to play up his 'mysterious wizard' persona. All while maintaining the utmost respect for his new superior, of course.

Harry knocked gently on the door.

"What is it?" a voice asked from within.

"Your resident wizard, just here to say hello," Harry said, unable to resist a grin.

The sound of feet approaching the door was followed by said door opening, revealing a rather surprised blonde. "Our resident what?!"

Through the door, Harry glimpsed many as-yet-unpacked boxes. "Your resident wizard, madam. Harry Potter, at your service." He offered his hand to shake.

Slowly, as if in a daze, she reached out and shook it, letting out a slightly shaky laugh. "And I thought aliens were the strangest secret the government was keeping from us…"

Good Lord, she was still getting over aliens being real? What on Earth was she doing heading the SGC? Quickly collecting himself and suppressing his shock, Harry offered a cordial reply. "Actually Doctor Weir, I'm a fairly recent addition to this base. If you're still getting over the aliens, I'm not surprised that you hadn't gotten to hearing about me yet."

Weir stiffened. "Did you just read my mind?"

What? Oh… "No, of course not. General Hammond, your predecessor, told me about you. Not much, mind you, but that's how I knew your name."

"Oh…"

"Well," Harry said, "I've introduced myself, and I can see you've got a lot on your plate. If you have any problem that seem like they need a wizarding touch, just give me a call. I'm sure someone around here knows where I live. I hope you enjoy your stay!" And with that Harry disapparated, reappearing in his lab. The SGC hadn't known yet that he could teleport, but he figured that Weir would find that one of the least interesting things about their conversation, so he was probably safe. Besides, Harry was the son of a marauder at heart, and he never could resist the opportunity to surprise someone by dissapearing into thin air.

* * *

Harry didn't even notice the unscheduled off-world activation alarm blaring throughout the base. He was neck-deep in the ancient database, still trying to find out how the bloody hell the Ancients had managed to make technology channel magical energy. What he _did_ notice was the proximity intent wards he'd set up getting tripped. They notified him any time someone got too close to his lab with the intent of visiting him, so that he wouldn't get caught off guard again like he had with General Hammond. He also kept a minor aversion ward on the door, but he'd had that in place before acquiring the Ancient Database, and had simply forgotten to close the door in his excitement.

Quickly coming out of his meditative state, Harry stood and walked over to the fried dialing device. To his surprise, he recognized most of the systems inside of it, and even what was wrong with them, but he didn't have time to think about that as a knock sounded on his door.

"Come in," he called, staring curiously at the dialing device.

The door opened, and Sam walked in. After a brief pause, she said, "Harry…we've just received word that in three days, Anubis will arrive at our location and destroy the Earth. We don't have any way to stop him unless we find one of those potentia before then, and I haven't had any luck with that so far."

Harry turned to face her. "You've come to ask me to build you a potentia."

Sam didn't blink at his blunt attitude. "If we don't get to the lost city and find some way to stop Anubis, Earth will be destroyed."

Harry considered that. So far, no one at the SGC had outright lied to him, and he didn't see why they would start now. Given time, they would be able to acquire their own potentia without owing him anything. Unfortunately, he'd done a bit more study on the potentia and discovered a small problem.

"I can't build you a potentia. Even if I understood how they work, and I only kind of grasp that, I still don't know how to create the actual source of their power, what I would call a node of pure magic. You might think of it as something like…"

"A pocket of isolated, artificial space-time that's capable generating vast amounts of vacuum energy."

Harry was impressed. "You've been doing your research."

Sam shrugged. "The search for gate addresses is mostly automatic once the dialing computer has a list of candidates. I needed something to do to pass the time."

"Right," Harry said, "well, that's nice and all, but unless you have an idea about how to make an isolated, artificial pocket of space-time and put it into a potentia, we're out of luck. I've come across a couple of magical anomalies in my travels that might have been able to help, but unfortunately I can't control exactly where I go when I travel between universes, so going back and finding them is out of the question. It'll be much easier to just keep running through addresses here. I'll see what I can do about making your system run faster."

Harry made to leave, but Sam hesitated.

"What is it?" Harry asked.

"It's...complicated. There's a politician, Kinsey, and he's trying to shut down the Stargate program for review. We're not sure yet, but we think that General Hammond's reassignment might have something to do with it."

"He's trying to… _now?_ Is he unaware of the magnitude of the threat coming our way?" Harry again entertained the idea that Sam might be lying about Anubis's impending attack, but dismissed the notion. She may have been a military woman, but she wasn't the type to exaggerate like so many military jocks were wont to.

Sam sighed. "This isn't the first time he's tried to shut us down. He wants to take control of the SGC and use it for…well, probably not for anything good. He likes to accuse us of creating threats to keep our funding from being cut."

"Lovely," Harry said. He considered the problem. "Are you still allowed to search for potentia?"

"No," Sam said, "all gate activity has been suspended until further notice. All I can do is eliminate the addresses we dialed before all of this happened, but I already did that."

Great. "So, what do we do?"

"There's going to be a meeting with Kinsey and Dr. Weir, the new head of the SGC. If Dr. Weir decides not to resume gate activity at this meeting…"

"Bad things," Harry finished succinctly. "All right then, when's this meeting set to take place?"

…

As Harry and Sam walked into the briefing room, O'Neill was speaking.

"Three days from now is a Thursday. Thursday's no good for us!"

Harry smiled. "Well, it could be worse. He could be coming on a Monday." Harry noticed a man in full Jaffa armor that he hadn't met before. He raised an eyebrow.

Noticing his look, Sam said, "Harry, this is Master Bra'tac, a freedom fighter and revered leader among the Jaffa. Bra'tac, this is Harry Potter, a…well, it might be better to let him describe himself."

Harry's lips quirked in amusement. "I'm a wizard, a researcher, and I also make a mean dish of Karrentian Soufflé. Harry Potter, at your service." Deciding not to risk looking like a fool by offering a handshake to a non-Earth-native, Harry settled for a respectful half-bow with his head lowered. When he came out of the bow, Bra'tac was giving him a heavily scrutinous look, but the man returned the bow with a courteous nod.

O'Neill spoke up. "Harry here's the one that got all the Ancient knowledge outta my noggin, and probably saved my ass in the process. He's an alright guy, even if he is a bit…wizard-y." The colonel's eyes drifted heavily over Harry's clichéd wizarding robe.

Harry sighed. "Everyone's a critic. I just figured that if I go around claiming to be a wizard and doing magic, I should at least look the part." Realizing that Bra'tac still hadn't said anything, Harry stopped talking and waited for him to speak up, but they were interrupted by a nasally voice from across the room.

"Well, some people just don't know when to leave, do they?"

Harry looked toward the source of the voice and saw a white-haired politician standing next to Dr. Weir. He nodded to the woman, and she returned the gesture.

Weir looked around at the others gathered in the briefing room. "Major Carter, Colonel O'Neill, Doctor Jackson," she said, greeting each with a slight nod. "Teal'c," she added, acknowledging the Big Black Muscle Man who stood nearly directly opposite her. Said Muscle Man gave the barest hint of inclining his head toward her. Harry hoped that was just because the man didn't like Kinsey. Dr. Weir had seemed alright when they'd spoken earlier.

"So, shall we sit?" Harry asked. A general consensus of acknowledgement met his question, and everyone settled into a seat. Harry, unfortunately, was left to sit directly to Kinsey's left, between the politician and Bra'tac. The former was glaring at the SGC personnel, and the latter rested a highly suspicious gaze on Dr. Weir. Feeling rather like he was trapped between two oncoming storms, Harry sought a way to break the tension.

"So," he said lightly, "I hear Earth is about to be destroyed. Are we going to sit here and talk about it, or did someone come up with a plan for stopping that?"

All eyes in the room slowly made their way to him. From Bra'tac and the SGC personnel, he was met mostly with surprise, and Dr. Weir looked distinctly uncertain. Kinsey, on the other hand, was eyeing him with nearly outright hostility.

"I don't know who you've been listening too," the politician began hotly, "but I find it _highly convenient_ that as soon as Stargate operations were ceased, an imminent attack on the Earth was unveiled which necessitates their immediate resumption."

"That's funny," Harry said, "because I was under the impression that Anubis was planning on destroying the Earth long before Dr. Weir's assignment here shook things up. In fact, one might even say that the cessation of Stargate activities was _rather_ suspiciously timed, almost as though someone was trying to cripple Earth's defenses right before the final attack."

Kinsey reddened. "I don't know what you're suggesting, mister, but-"

"I'm suggesting," Harry interrupted the man, "that you are in league with Anubis and actively seeking to sabotage this planet's defenses in order to see it destroyed. I'm sorry, did that accusation strike a little too close to home?"

If looks could kill, the look that Kinsey gave Harry then would have liquefied him where he sat. "Are you _suggesting,"_ the politician said dangerously, "that the Vice President of the United States of America is trying to destroy the very country that just elected him?"

Vice President? Why had no one told Harry that this guy was that high up the food chain? Oh well, nothing to it but to stick to his guns, at this point. "I wasn't aware that you were the Vice President. But yes, that is exactly what I'm suggesting. I mean, who better? You likely had a hand in the reassignment of the former commander of this base, and even if Dr. Weir is competent, she's only just been read into the classified operations that go on around here. If I wanted to sabotage Earth's defenses, I can't think of too many better ways to go about it without being noticed."

Kinsey's face nearly twisted in fury, before a mask of forced calm descended on his face. "Your accusations are _completely_ baseless." he said, scorn filling his voice, "Who are you to make such accusations of the Vice President of the United States?"

Harry smiled. "Oh, just an outsider giving his opinion of the situation. But if you want to talk about baseless accusations, what evidence do you have to support your own accusations that the SGC fabricated the impending attack on Earth?"

"Gentlemen, please," Dr. Weir said, cutting off any response, "Since it seems that neither of you have evidence to support your claims, we'll have to ignore said claims until you can provide a more convincing case. Now, Harry, I'm aware of your contributions to this matter, but Vice President Kinsey brings up a good point. What gives you the right to be at this meeting?"

"The right?" Harry thought about that. "Nothing really. But I think I've earned the privilege to weigh in on matters relating to Anubis's impending attack. Among other things, I can probably offer some decent advice on how to defend your world. I've been traveling for…well, longer than you're likely to believe, and this isn't the first, or even the tenth time I've been in the position of having to aid planetary defense efforts against a large-scale attack with less than a week's forewarning."

"Really?" Weir asked, "How many of those planets survived the attacks?"

Harry sighed. "Six out of twelve. But of the planets that were destroyed, only one wasn't evacuated in time, and that was…an unusual circumstance." A bit of an understatement, but if Harry told them that a literal god had been hell-bent on destroying that planet, it would raise more questions than he felt like answering. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure Earth has the resources right now to effect an evacuation, so if you want my advice, you should focus all of your efforts on a defensive. The SGC even has a plan that's already well in the works, but Sam could explain that better than I could."

Taking that as her cue, Sam said, "We believe that we know the location of a lost city of the Ancients. The only problem is that the city is located in another galaxy, and we'd need a massive supply of power to sustain an intergalactic Stargate connection. Fortunately, due to our recent acquisition of the Ancient Repository, we have a list of possible gate addresses where we can look for such a suitable power source. All we need to continue looking is permission to resume gate activity."

Kinsey scoffed. "Well, isn't that just incredibly convenient. You need permission to resume gate activity right after we took it away."

Sam frowned thoughtfully. "Actually…if you check the gate logs, I started the search more than a day before gate activity was suspended. As Harry said, it wasn't news that Anubis wanted to destroy the Earth, and we've been looking for a way to stop him for quite some time."

Harry smiled. He'd been about to suggest checking the gate logs himself, only to be reminded that Sam practically made a sport out of exceeding all possible expectations.

Dr. Weir and Kinsey exchanged a _look._ Kinsey's expression was one of warning, but Weir's face stayed carefully neutral, and she broke eye contact with the politician to look at Sam. "Do you think you'll be able to find a power source in time?"

Sam faltered. Harry knew that there was no way she could make any such guarantee. Clearing his throat, he spoke up.

"You might also take inventory of your own defenses. I mean, from what I understand they'll be nuclear based weapons, and nukes are useless against most energy shields. Still, you never know what you might find." Harry gave Sam a meaningful look as he said that. He'd come across the designs for drone launchers in his search of the Ancient Database, and Inter had pointed out a listing of all known installations of drone launchers that included a small outpost near Earth's south pole. Harry could help them power it, as the launcher didn't require nearly as much energy to function as an intergalactic wormhole. But weapons like that were something that the people of Earth needed to discover on their own.

Besides, if the native Earthlings made it to the Ancients' city without him, who knew how long it would be before they let him check it out? No, it was much better to be sure somehow that he would be a part of the initial expedition. Forcing the SGC into a confrontation that was already inevitable in a way that ensured their victory would have happy the side-benefit of offering him ample opportunities to show his trustworthiness. Hopefully enough trustworthiness that they would accept him as an expedition member as they explored one of their most significant discoveries…well, ever.

As the conversation continued without Harry noticing too much, he hid the dreamy expression that wanted to take over his face. They were discussing the fate of their planet, after all. Wizard or no, he couldn't look like he was fantasizing, even if his fantasy was a simple daydream about all of the Ancient technology he hoped to someday study.

* * *

After the meeting broke up, Harry noticed Kinsey rather rudely following Weir into her office, nearly slamming the door behind him. Curious, but not wanting to eavesdrop, Harry waited for the man to come back out. After enduring the Vice President's glare for several seconds, Harry decided to ignore the man and walked right past him to Weir's office.

"You did the right thing, back there." Harry's daydream had ended before the end of the meeting, and so he'd seen Weir approve Sam's plan to continue dialing addresses from her list. There was no guarantee that they would find anything before Anubis attacked, but they didn't have many other options at the moment.

Weir, who had been staring out of her door with a lost expression on her face, looked at Harry with mild surprise. "I suppose you've made your position on the matter clear. And though I didn't quite realize it, so have I."

Harry nodded. "I suspect that in Kinsey's world, you're either with him or against him. There's no middle ground."

"Yes," Weir said, "I got that impression. He's made it clear that he's not a man to be crossed."

Harry smiled, putting on his cheekiest expression. "Well Dr. Weir, if it's any comfort, I'll let you in on a secret."

A ghost of a laugh danced in Weir's eyes. "I seem to be hearing a lot of secrets, these past few days."

"Indeed," Harry said. "So, here's another one for you." He leaned in very closely and whispered in her ear, _"I'm not a man to be crossed either."_ Standing normally, Harrry continued, "but that didn't stop Kinsey, now did it?"

Weir just stared at him, not sure what to say.

* * *

 **A/N: I just want to take a moment to thank all of the people who left brief, succinct reviews along the lines of "I like it," or "Nice chapter." This website doesn't allow you to 'like' a story or individual chapters as such, but that's the next best thing, and the extra effort it takes just makes it all the more heartwarming.**

 **So, thank you to everyone who did that. It's a huge motivator to keep writing. You guys may not have told me what I did that you liked so much, but you're still a huge help towards writing this story, and I can't thank you enough.**

 **I did say once that I would get a good night's sleep before posting a chapter, didn't I? I think I did, but I can't seem to remember right. Oh well, I'll just retcon it later if it's a problem.**

 **~feauxen**


	6. The Outpost

**A/N: Read the damn chapter already.**

* * *

Harry 'sat' in his lab, meditating. He was vaguely aware that he was floating a few feet off the ground, but he didn't care too much at the moment. Currently, all of his attention was focused on the problems presented by Kinsey and Anubis. One could easily destroy the planet, but the other might just make the planet worthy of that destruction.

Stopping Anubis, fortunately, was easy. Even if Sam and the SGC didn't discover the weapons platform in Antarctica, Harry could find out its exact location and apparate there. Hell, he'd probably even be able to power it with his own magic and a few tricks, given what he'd found in its specifications. But that's not what Harry was worries about.

No, what worried him was this Kinsey fellow. Vice President of the US, no less. From a few of the things Sam had said, it seemed like the President himself wasn't such a slimeball, but Kinsey was just about the worst a politician could get, and probably had ways to keep himself afloat even without the Vice Presidency. The real trick was finding out how to neutralize those options so that if Kinsey went down, he'd stay down. Well, either that or figure out how to keep most of the power in the President's hands so that Kinsey couldn't do much damage.

His thoughts were interrupted as the door burst open. Unsurprised, as he'd felt his visitor coming through his wards, Harry drifted gently into a standing position.

"You have a copy of the Ancient Repostory!" Sam accused him loudly.

Harry groaned. "You know, even if I do, that doesn't mean you shouldn't knock first, woman. Honestly, I could have been doing anything in here."

"Don't change the subject, Harry. You said that you were waiting for our permission to study the Repository!"

Harry smiled. "No, Sam. I implied as much by saying that I would very much like your permission to study the Database. But you must realize that I've been searching for the means to blend technology and magic for centuries now. Among other things, I'm much more qualified to search through the Database than you are. Besides, I really did give you the full version of the Database. Why are you so upset?"

That stopped Sam short. "You lied to us. You told us that we would have control of the Repository, and then you went behind our back and took it for yourself!"

Harry chuckled at that. "Sam…I won't deny that I led you to believe that. And to clarify, I do believe that you're ready to start exploring the Ancients' Database, so don't misunderstand me. But consider this; if I hadn't hinted so heavily that you should search through the Database for possible defenses, you wouldn't have found what you did. I really am here to help, Sam. You're just going to have to accept that I have my own agenda beyond that, an agenda I will pursue in every way I know of that doesn't hamper your own goals."

"But…why didn't you just tell us that you kept a copy of the database?" Sam asked.

Harry considered that. Why _hadn't_ he told the SGC that he'd kept a copy of the Database? They didn't seem the sort to get upset about that, especially when he was giving them their own copy. "I guess…I'm just not used to dealing with people like you and the SGC, Sam. I've grown used to races that are either incredibly used to space travel and advanced technology and the problems that come with all of that, or races that really aren't ready for nearly any kind of advanced technology. But you, Sam…well, you and the SGC blur that line. On one hand you still primarily use primitive firearms and unshielded electronics, but on the other you've figured out how to use one of the most complex machines in the universe all on your own. At times, it's hard for me to look past the former to see the latter."

Sam stared at Harry speculatively for several long moments. "You know," she said finally, "I'm not sure whether or not I should be upset."

"Then don't be," Harry said. "A good rule of thumb is to never get upset if you can't figure out what's upsetting you."

"If you say so," Sam replied doubtfully.

"So," Harry said, "tell me about the real reason you're here. What have you found in the Ancient Database this time?"

Sam narrowed her eyes at Harry, and he could tell she wasn't going to forget his deceit so easily, but she allowed the change of subject. "It seems like the Ancients left a weapons platform on the archipelago that became Antarctica. I've looked at the designs, and I think it could potentially take out Anubis's whole fleet, provided it still has a working power source. It looks like it was powered by another potentia, so there's a chance that it'll work."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "I'd still take a dozen or so of whatever your most powerful generator is, just in case. And if it's under the ice, you're also going to need a way to get down to it, as well." Harry checked the time with Inter. "You've got a little more than two days for all of that. What do you say we do some brainstorming?"

"That sounds good," Sam said, then she paused. "Wait…we?"

Harry smiled. "While I have nothing but faith in your abilities, Sam, it's my hide too if this plan doesn't pan out. I'd be happy to help out where I can."

Sam broke out into a huge smile. "I'll go clear it with the general!"

...

Once Sam calmed down enough to remember the recent change of leadership, she dragged Harry off to Weir, who had a few reservations. Nonetheless, Sam persuaded her to let Harry look over all of the relevant information on drilling through the Antarctic ice. She also mentioned in passing that they'd already done a bit of drilling to extract a second Stargate they'd found several years ago.

Once he was set free (under the close watch of several lab technicians and even base security through the CCTV cameras) Harry immediately overrode the technicians' objections and looked up the location of the previous excavations the SGC had overseen. It seemed the most difficult part had been ensuring that the network of ice caves didn't collapse on the buried gate. After the hole had been safely dug, they'd simply rigged a crane and pulled the Stargate out of the ice. A side note indicated that there'd been some icequakes in the area since, but Harry was willing to bet that the existing shaft would be the easiest place to start.

Then, Harry looked up the equipment they'd used to drill their shaft. It wasn't anything special, but it had gotten the job done. It just needed a few modifications for what he had in mind…

* * *

The skinny guy, who had introduced himself as Dr. Daniel Jackson, looked at Harry doubtfully. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Harry smiled. "Of course I am. If this fails, we're all dead. I wouldn't put anything but my best foot forward."

Jackson eyed Harry's modified drill speculatively. "It just looks a little…"

"Shaky," O'Neill finished for him.

Harry sighed. "That's unavoidable. The drill _has_ to be flexible in order to rotate towards the Ancient facility once it gets down to the proper level."

"You know," Jackson commented, "I asked Sam to look it up for me, and it seems like they're actually called 'Alterans,' not Ancients."

"Wait, really?" Harry asked. Inter quickly sent him a mental confirmation. "Huh. Well, regardless, that has nothing to do with whether or not the drill will work. And it'll work. Trust me."

The gathered members of SG-1 all gave him remarkably similar looks of doubt, but before they could say anything one of the technicians fine-tuning the drill interrupted the shouted, "All ready!"

Harry turned to watch as the drill slowly started to rotate, pointedly ignoring the doubt that was still pouring off of SG-1. Soon, the drill had been lowered all the way into the hole, down to the first blockage. With an incredible whirring roar that was muffled only slightly by the ice, the drill spun to life. Then, a few seconds later, an even louder churning _crrrrrrruuuuuunnnnnch_ sound began as the drill started chewing through the ice. Harry, still grinning, looked at the people standing nearby, gauging their reactions. O'Neill's face was carefully blank. Sam just stared at the hole the noise emanated from in mild awe, as though she could hardly believe what was happening. Dr. Jackson's skeptical expression was slowly fading.

Teal'c had the same unreadable expression as he always did. Harry wasn't sure that anything could make the large muscleman show emotion.

"A few more hours of this and we'll be laughing," Harry said. "In the meantime, I don't suppose any of you brought something to read?"

…

Several hours later, after the drilling had finished, Harry admired the resulting hole. It was a straight shot down at nearly 45 degrees, and while he couldn't see it in the unlit opening, a few thousand feet down there was a sharp turn where the shaft hit its bottom and began tunneling directly toward the outpost.

"Well," he said aloud, "Looks like it's time to see what our ancient ancestors left behind!"

"Um…I see a small problem with that plan," Dr. Jackson said hesitantly.

"Oh? And what's that?" Harry asked.

"It's just that all we have right now is a really long ice slide down into the bowels of a glacier and no safe way down," Jackson said drily.

"Oh, that." Harry slipped his wand from his sleeve with a flourish. "That's not a problem at all." With a swish of his wand, a staircase was formed into the icy tunnel, and a few idle flicks provided a rough surface on the stairs to prevent slipping, as well as a constant sourceless light throughout the tunnel's length.

The assorted SGC personnel all stopped what they were doing to stare at him.

"Harry," O'Neill said slowly, "what was that?"

"I didn't feel like waiting for you lot to set up ropes and pitons. Besides, any lighting you came up with would probably have melted the ice, and that's no good."

O'Neill gave Harry a rather bemused look, but didn't say anything.

"Well then," the wizard said, twirling his wand and slipping it back into his sleeve, "shall we?" Without waiting for an answer, he started down his newly crafted staircase. Before long, O'Neill, Teal'c, Dr. Jackson, and Sam rushed to join him, bringing along their inevitable questions.

"Wait!" Sam cried, "If you could do that the whole time, why'd you need to bother with a drill?"

Harry smiled. "I couldn't have bored a tunnel through the ice with the necessary precision, Sam. Magic is harder to cast at a distance, and creating a tunnel like this one would have required that I was within 100 feet or so. It wouldn't have been impossible, but it would definitely have taken longer than just using your drill if I had to keep carving out a place to stand."

"But…if magic is so hard to cast at a distance, how did you make the staircase?"

"Oh, that's simple," Harry said, "For one thing, stairs are easier, and for another, I only created about 500 feet or so of stairs. When we get to the end of the staircase, I'll make another, and then another, and so on until we reach the bottom." As he said this, he spotted the end of his staircase coming up. "See, here we are right now." With another few choice spells, the staircase extended once more into the depths, and Harry continued down without breaking his stride.

After several minutes of this, they reached the bottom of the shaft. Shortly afterward, they were met by a rather peculiar sight. The tunnel ended in an inverted cone of ice that tapered into a single dark point that looked vaguely metallic.

"Huh," Harry said aloud, "it looks like the drill stopped just short of actually touching the wall. That's actually pretty impressive, considering that we were going off of data that's 10 million years old." With a flick of his wand, he vanished the remaining ice to reveal a rather elegantly-crafted wall with a singular angular panel half-protruding from the ice.

"So…how do we get in?" O'Neill asked.

Harry considered that. This was, for all intents and purposes, a blank exterior wall. "I think we'll need to go around the outpost and see if we can find a door of some sort. Sam, do you still have the Database?"

The blonde shook her head. "No, I left it back at the SGC for the other scientists to study. Why?"

"We might have been able to use it to figure out which way would be more likely to lead us to a door."

Dr. Jackson spoke up. "Umm…I see a bigger problem. How exactly are we going to 'go around?' There's kind of a lot of ice in the way."

"Hmm? Oh, that's easy," Harry said, "Now that I don't have to worry about falling down an icy shaft, I should be able to clear the ice around the outpost without trouble. This place isn't too big, so even if we go the wrong way this probably won't take very long." And with that, he cast a focused vanishing charm along the wall in one direction and started walking. Several charms and several yards later, the wall was broken by what looked to be a door.

"Well hello. What do we have here?" Harry said, running a hand over the angular architecture. It looked nothing like the ruins he'd been studying before he'd been interrupted by the Jaffa, but perhaps that had been a simpler outpost than this one. Either way, he needed to find a way to get the door open. With a swish of his wand, all the ice cleared around the doorway, revealing what looked like a control panel to the right side. He looked at it speculatively, but before he could do anything, Sam stepped up to it and got out a tablet computer.

"This looks like it might be the door controls. Give me a few minutes, I can probably get it to open." She then knelt by the panel and started probing the panel with various tools and instruments she carried in the various pockets on her tactical vest.

Harry stared at Sam in mild surprise. He'd been just about to do the exact same thing, but she'd beaten him to the punch. That hadn't happened to him in quite a while.

After a bit of prodding, Sam pulled off an access panel to reveal several control crystals. Harry frowned. They weren't lit, which meant there was no power. Sam, apparently having come to the same conclusion, said, "This might take a while. This facility is so old that either the power is shut down or exhausted. I'm going to have to look for a manual override."

O'Neill turned to Harry. "Hey, why don't you just do that vanish-y trick you did on the ice?"

Harry smiled. "That really shouldn't be necessary, but it's also a lot more difficult when I'm not sure what the material I'm vanishing is made of. I was actually about to offer to fiddle with the door controls myself, but Sam seems like she knows what she's doing."

Sam glanced up at him. "You know a lot more about alien technology than I do, Harry. If you want to take over, I won't get in your way."

"Oh," Harry said, "well in that case, budge over a bit." He knelt down and examined the control crystals more closely. From his basic understanding of Alteran circuitry, he could tell that the power for the console was external to this console, and he also knew that without a power source of their own, they stood little chance of making the control crystals do much of anything. "Say, you didn't happen to bring those generators with you by chance?" he asked.

There was an awkward pause. "No…" Sam said, "we left them up on the surface because you started down the shaft before we were ready."

Oops. "Sorry about that," the wizard said apologetically. "Fortunately, I don't think this will need a whole lot of power to operate." Sliding his wand out of his sleeve, Harry decided to try something…adventurous. He'd never been able to use magical energy to power traditional technology before, but from everything he'd seen about Alteran circuitry so far, it should be able to run on pure magic. Hell, that's basically what a potentia provided, and that seemed to be a fairly ordinary power source for them. So, carefully, he channeled a bit of raw magical energy into the control crystals. Nothing happened, but he could have sworn he felt a light tickling on the back of his consciousness.

"Huh," he said aloud. Then, figuring that maybe he hadn't given the circuitry enough juice, he channeled a little bit more magic into the system. This time, instead of a light mental tickle, he got a distinct sense of emptiness, almost like he felt when he'd exhausted himself magically. Pouring a little more power into the system made this feeling of emptiness, recede, so Harry grit his teeth and started pouring as more and more power into the crystals.

"Harry…what are you doing?" Sam asked, but before Harry could answer the crystals flickered and then lit up with a brilliant blue color. Harry stopped pouring power into the circuitry, leveling off his input. Remarkably, the system seemed aware of exactly how much power it needed, and somehow…guided his input to the appropriate level.

Harry stared at the control crystals in wonder. "It's…running. I turned it on…with magic. I didn't even know that was _possible."_

Sam looked at him sharply. "Then why did you try it?"

Harry grinned. "Well it worked, didn't it? I've been looking for a technology that could interface with magic like this for a _very_ long time, and I wasn't completely sure that I'd found it until just now. These Alterans were impressive little buggers." As he spoke, Harry examined the control crystals, trying to identify the one that controlled the door mechanism. And then, remarkably, he felt a questioning mental nudge from the system flow back through the stream of magic he was using to power the circuits. Acting on a hunch, he pushed back a mental image of an open door.

With a slight hiss, the door unsealed itself and then slid open. "Remarkable," Harry said, "I didn't even have to mess with the physical circuitry. I'm a _part_ of the circuitry, since I'm providing it with power."

Sam stared at him in clear shock, unsure of what to say. Behind them, O'Neill simply said, "Well, that's handy."

"Handy indeed," Harry muttered to himself, sending a query of his own through the system. "It looks like the potentia powering this facility ran out of juice a long time ago. If I'm understanding theses systems right, they're designed to run on about…50 gigajoules of power. Can your generators pull that off?"

Sam took a few seconds, probably running some serious mental calculations. "I…think so. We only brought eight of them, but I think they can generate that much if we run them side-by-side."

"Alright," Harry said, "I'm going to start studying these systems while someone goes and gets the generators. I'd fetch them myself, but…well, I've just confirmed that this outpost's technology is something I've been searching for for…longer than you'd probably believe. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to take a look around."

Sam looked at O'Neill hopefully. The colonel stared back at her expressionlessly, and Harry could almost _feel_ the argument that the two must have had so many times it didn't even need to be said anymore.

"Oh, all right!" O'Neill finally snapped, "Carter, you stay with Harry and do your little technical…studying. Daniel…" Jack turned to the archeologist, "go have fun. Teal'c, you and I can go fetch the generators our resident wizard so kindly forgot about."

"Sorry," Harry offered sheepishly. He'd been so eager to get to the outpost that he'd almost forgotten why they were there.

O'Neill gave him an unamused look. "Teal'c, let's go before these three start boring us simple men."

Teal'c raised a single eyebrow, but turned and followed O'Neill back to the surface. Harry wasn't sure whether the heavily muscled man was putting up with O'Neill's unusual sense of humor or just ignoring it. Teal'c was a hard man to read.

Turning back to the now-open door, Harry felt his excitement stirring. This whole outpost ran on circuits that could withstand and even _use_ magical energy. He couldn't wait to get started. "Well," he said, "where should we look first?"

…

A half hour later, Harry was deeply engrossed in the central fixture of the outpost's main room: the control chair. He hadn't figured out how it worked yet, because he was trying not to use the crutch of the Alteran database. If he got used to using that every time he needed to figure out a new piece of technology, he'd start to lose his touch. Unfortunately, this stubborn desire to figure it out the old fashioned way wasn't getting him very far.

"Do you see any circuits that look like they're crossing between control systems?" he asked Sam, who had opened a service panel on the back of the chair.

"No, I don't," she said. "Why?"

"Well, if we can figure out which systems are connected, we might be able to figure out which ones are the most important, at the very least." Harry poked his wand into the arm of the chair. At first glance it looked to be covered in some sort of plastic-like comfort gel, but every time Harry touched it he felt a little jolt, almost like the sensation he'd gotten when interfacing with the door panel. Unlike the door panel, however, it didn't seem that he had the necessary power to actually activate the chair's systems, so he was stuck with the good old fashioned method of pulling off the proverbial hood and trying to figure out what all the pieces did. "Have you tried running a mild electrical current through the crystals?" Harry asked.

"No." Sam peaked around the chair. "Wouldn't that damage them?"

"It shouldn't. I ran several kilojoules of magical energy through the door panel and the crystals outside were just fine. If I'm understanding the technology right, they're something like incredibly advanced microchips. They might not be designed for traditional electricity, but I'd bet they can work with it."

Sam frowned. "But I still don't understand how that would help us. We won't have enough power to activate the chair, or any of the systems."

"No, we wouldn't," Harry said, "but we don't need to activate the functionality of the chair to find out how it distributes power. I hate to say it, but I don't think we can do much else until we get those generators in here."

"All right then, I'll give it a shot." Sam pulled her tablet out of the back pocket on her vest and started poking at its screen. After a few seconds, she pulled out a cord from somewhere and connected it to the tablet, then one of the crystals by a sophisticated-looking clamp. After tapping the tablet a few more times, she looked up at Harry. "There's definitely a pattern to the power flow, but I can't make anything out of it."

"Really?" Harry looked over her shoulder. The tablet displayed a flowchart readout of the feedback it was getting from the chair's crystals. There was certainly a pattern to the feedback, but he couldn't make heads or tails of it, and half of the text was Alteran that Sam's tablet couldn't translate.

"Hmm…maybe if we-" Harry began, but he was cut off as O'Neill walked into the room.

"Look what I brought, kiddos!" the colonel proclaimed dryly, a silver generator under each arm. Behind him, Teal'c walked in carrying _two_ generators under each arm, and a woman in a lab coat followed behind him with the last two cradled in her arms.

"Or," Harry said, "we could just hook up the generators and go from there."

…

10 minutes and a fair bit of fancy wiring later, Harry and Sam were pretty sure they'd connected the generators up right. But in the end, there was really only one way to be sure, and before they turned it on there was an important decision to make.

"Who's going to sit in the chair?"

Sam, O'Neill, Dr. Jackson, Teal'c, and the female technician all stared at Harry blankly.

"What?" the wizard asked defensively, "It's a valid question. I'm pretty sure that chair is the primary interface with the technology in this outpost. If no one sits in it, we'd probably have to muddle around with circuits and control crystals for ages before we figured out how anything worked, and we don't have that kind of time on our hands."

Beside him, Sam reluctantly nodded. "Harry's right. We were looking at the chair's control crystals earlier, and we couldn't make heads or tails of them. None of the rest of the outpost looks even remotely like it's meant to be interactive, so the chair is our best bet."

The room fell silent. Harry noticed a suspicious majority of the people looking toward O'Neill. Apparently, the colonel noticed them as well.

"What?" the man snapped, "Why is everyone looking at me?"

Harry shrugged. "Don't ask me. I'm just following the crowd."

"Sir," Sam said, "you _are_ the only one we know of with the gene to activate Ancient technology. The chair might not work for anyone else."

Wait, Harry thought to himself, there's a gene for that? Inter faithfully looked up the relevant entry in the Alteran Database, and sure enough, there was a gene that most Alteran technology was programmed to look for in its users. Harry didn't have the means to check at the moment, but he was pretty familiar with his genome, and he was pretty sure he'd never seen this particular gene before. His musing was interrupted, however, as O'Neill threw his hands up in the air.

"All right, what do you want me to do?"

Harry smiled. "It should be pretty intuitive, actually. Once we turn on the power, all you need to do is sit down in the chair. You might need to touch the conductive pads on the armrests, but other than that I think it's entirely a mental interface."

O'Neill frowned. "That sounds pretty complicated."

"It sounds complicated, but it shouldn't be too difficult to operate," Harry said, "I mean, when I was interacting with the door panel I just needed to think about what I wanted and the system interpreted it with no problem."

The colonel considered that for several long seconds, then shook his head in resignation. "Let's do it then."

Harry grinned and got right to work, carefully preparing to activate four of the generators at the same time as Sam activated the other four. At long last, he was actually going to see _working_ Alteran technology. It was all he could do to keep from laughing giddily. With a nod to Sam, Harry pulled the activation rigging out of his generators just as she did the same to hers. The cores sunk into their respective generators and, with a low hum, the outpost slowly began to come to life around them. Lights turned on, bathing the whole room in a white glow. The chair back briefly glowed a light blue and hummed, before falling silent.

Harry looked at O'Neill. "Moment of truth."

O'Neill sighed. "Why am I the one that always ends up doing this sort of thing?" Without waiting for an answer, the colonel sat in the chair.

Immediately, the back of the chair began to glow blue. As if startled, O'Neill clapped his hands to the armrests, and suddenly the chair began to recline as the blue glow grew even stronger.

"Sir?" Sam asked loudly, "what's going on?"

O'Neill didn't respond. Harry frowned. That wasn't like him. With a flick of his wand, Harry cast a quick diagnostic charm on the man. Aside from an excess of brain activity, he seemed fine.

"As far as I can tell he's all right," Harry said, "he might just be so deeply connected to the chair that he can't hear us right now."

As if in response, O'Neill muttered something. Sam rushed to his side. "What was that, sir?"

"I can…hear you," the man said, louder this time.

Harry blinked. "Oh. Well, it was just a theory. All I can really tell from my assessment is that your brain activity is off the charts for a normal human. Fortunately, this time, it's not at dangerous levels. What's the chair telling you?"

"Telling…me?" O'Neill asked, sounding a bit strained. "It…wants to know…the date?"

Harry cast a quick charm. "Tell it that the current astro-date is… 3,737,421,946R, system-side."

"What…?" O'Neill asked, but then he fell silent. "It…heard you. It's…thanking you?"

Harry looked around him, suddenly realizing that he was inside of a rather large machine that might even qualify as sentient. "Erm…you're welcome, I guess."

"Uh…" Dr. Jackson cleared his throat, "I have to ask. What's an…astro-date?"

"Hmm? Oh, that's just the current age of the local star in revolutions of the local habitable planet. It's a fairly standard dating system once civilizations go interstellar, especially for little outposts that don't have to interact with some larger empire."

"But…I thought the sun was 4 billion years old?"

Harry smiled. "It is, if you round up. But, more importantly…O'Neill, can you ask the outpost what kind of weapons it has?"

"It has…drones?" O'Neill sounded very confused. "They look like…squids."

Harry tilted his head in confusion. That didn't sound like the entry _he'd_ seen in the Database. "What kind of drones?"

"I don't know it...wait, they're...energy shielded…remote detonation…multi…phasic…flight controls?" Suddenly, O'Neill lifted his hands from the armrests, and the chair raised up from its reclined position. "Yeesh!" he exclaimed, "that _thing_ is incredibly…odd. I felt like my mind could barely keep up with it, and I got the sense that it was going slowly just so that I would understand."

"It probably was," Harry said. "Keep in mind that the race that built these was highly advanced. Even if they didn't naturally evolve better brains by the time they built this place, they'd have been able to massively augment themselves through genetics and nanotechnology. I think we're probably lucky that the system can run slow enough for a normal human. I mean, that door panel out there felt like it was almost as smart as I am, and all _it_ does is open the door."

There was a moment of silence as everyone considered that. Then O'Neill asked, "Are you saying that their _doors_ are as smart as we are?"

Harry smiled grimly. "Yeah, I am. They're a civilization that was advanced enough to create stable, reliable interstellar wormholes. I, for one, don't feel shame in the fact that I'd never be able to measure up to them. I mean, it's not like-"

 _Bzzrt- "Colonel O'Neill, come in!"_ All eyes were suddenly drawn to said Colonel's radio.

Adopting a no-nonsense expression, O'Neill put a hand on the radio to respond. "This is O'Neill. What's going on?"

 _"Three Goa'uld ships just entered Earth orbit. We think they're just a scouting force for the main attack, but we need that Ancient weapon,_ now! _How are things looking down there?"_

O'Neill glanced at the chair, which had gone dark but still hummed with power. "We've got it operational. Do you want us to take them out?"

There was a long pause. Then, _"Negative. Do not engage. Power down the weapon until further notice. We're going to try to draw Anubis's main fleet here so that we can end this once and for all."_

"Understood." O'Neill nodded at Sam, who quickly started powering down the generators. Soon, the lights around the facility went dark, and they were left with what little light came from their handheld electric torches.

Harry turned to O'Neill. "Do you think you can handle firing the drones once Anubis gets here?"

The colonel gave him an odd look. "Well…probably. It's a bit…odd sitting in that damn chair, but I think I could handle it."

Harry nodded. "Good. I'm going back to the SGC, I think I'll be more use there. This place is just a glorified weapons platform right now, and we don't need everyone down here."

O'Neill gave him a long look, but it was Sam who asked, "Are you sure you can get back in time? If Anubis's fleet is successfully lured out, we won't have much time to fly you back to America."

Harry smiled. "Oh, I wasn't asking for a ride. If you've got everything handled down here, I can get back to the SGC just fine on my own. So…you do have everything handled, right?"

Sam nodded slowly, looking confused. "But…how are you going to get back to the SGC on your own?"

Harry winked. "I have my ways." And with a _crack_ of displaced air, the mischievous wizard disapparated.

* * *

 **A/N: So this was certainly a chapter. Sorry it was a bit late, but the writer's block fairy has been visiting me lately. Hopefully I've scared her off now.**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	7. The Battle

**A/N: There was a lot to say about this chapter, so I put the author's notes at the end for those of you who are interested. But basically, this is an important chapter, and that's why it took so long to get out. I hope you find that it was worth the wait!**

* * *

With a sharp _crack,_ Harry appeared in his quarters at the SGC. Opening the door, he was unsurprised to see that no one was currently working on his wards. That sort of thing was hardly a priority with a scouting force in orbit preparing for a planetary invasion.

Harry quickly made his way up to Dr. Weir's office, nodding to a few familiar faces along the way. When he arrived, he knocked sharply on the door.

Dr. Weir was quite surprised to see him. "Harry! I thought you were in Antarctica!"

Harry grinned. "I was. I came back once the weapon was set up. I figured I might be more use around here than down there. Sam's quite smart enough to turn the thing back on herself, and O'Neill can operate it without a wizard present."

"You…" Dr. Weir looked quite bewildered, "how did you get back from Antarctica so quickly?"

Harry winked at her. "A magician never reveals his tricks. Besides, it's nothing you haven't seen before."

"You mean…that popping thing you did…that was actually teleportation?"

Harry nodded. "We call it apparition, but yes. I just popped back into my quarters and then came straight here. So, is there anything in the works that I can help with?"

At this, Dr. Weir hesitated. "That…might not be necessary. In fact, it might even be better for you to go back to Antarctica, in the unlikely event that something _does_ go wrong with the weapon."

"Really?" Harry asked, "There's absolutely nothing up here that could use a wizard's touch? No tactical advice you might want to seek out?"

Dr. Weir drew a deep breath in, looking unsure of herself. "Well…"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Well…?"

Dr. Weir let out a distressed sigh. "It's complicated…frankly Mr. Potter, while you're our 'resident wizard,' you've given me very little idea what that title actually means. General Hammond left some nice notes about you, but you're still incredibly mysterious and I just can't justify involving you in such a critical combat mission. Major Carter seemed to think that the mission to Antarctica was a special case, but what we're talking about now…to be honest I don't even know how much help you could be."

"That's fair enough," Harry said. And if Sam's anger upon finding out that he'd copied their Alteran database was any indicator, perhaps a little honesty might be a good policy here. "I haven't exactly been open about my abilities. The ways I can see myself being useful to a plan like this one…I'm an ace pilot, flier, and all around stellar navigator if you need someone like that. As you probably know already, I'm worth about a hundred normal infantry troops on the ground if the fighting ever gets that far, possibly more than that if the enemy…cooperates. I can operate just as effectively over water as in the air, though I don't have a lot of experience at underwater combat. So, does any of that sound useful?"

Dr. Weir stared at Harry for several long seconds. "…your file makes you out to be much more of a…tech genius, I suppose, than a man of action."

Harry laughed at that. "I killed my first Dark Lord at the age of 18, Doctor. My interest in technology and theoretical magical studies came much later in life." Scratching his chin thoughtfully, Harry continued, "Though you do bring up a decent point. It might be better for me to play a supporting role, since this is only the second time you've really seen me in action. I can't really set up effective defenses on such short notice, but if you have something you want disguised I could probably whip up a large-scale illusion or two. I can also reinforce materials to a frankly ridiculous degree, if that would be helpful, teleport around if communications get knocked out, conjure up a variety of things from thin air, maybe even spy on the enemy ships, or…well, your imagination is the limit, really. Magic is quite versatile."

Dr. Weir got a thoughtful look on her face. "You said…illusions? What kind of illusions?"

Harry thought back to the frankly embarrassing number of illusions he'd invented over the years for pranking purposes, but then decided it was better not to mention those. "It depends. If it just needs to look right on scanning instruments and a visual sweep I can set up a fake military installment or two, though it probably wouldn't be able to launch any attacks, and the deception works better from a distance. I could probably create a fake 'destroyed' base, if you want it to look like some key target was successfully neutralized. And if you want a more complicated trick, I can probably pretend to be some kind of stationary weapons platform as a distraction. Some of the spells I have resemble traditional or even high-tech weaponry pretty well, and I could probably hide the fact that it would just be one guy behind all of it. Make it look like your ace in the hole, as it were, to distract from the Antarctic outpost."

"That sounds pretty useful, actually," Dr. Weir said, "do you think you could give me a demonstration? If I'm going to recommend that you be allowed to help, I should probably see with my own eyes what you're capable of."

That sounded pretty fair to Harry. As he considered his options given the limited space in the room, the wizard almost kicked himself. He was demonstrating _illusions._ That meant he didn't have to worry about things like that.

Visualizing the image he wanted in his head and then adding other sensory details like smell, sound, and texture, Harry called up Inter. Theoretically, a mage could do this sort of thing on their own, but Harry found it much easier to have an extra intelligence focusing on keeping up the little details while he worked on the big picture. Then Harry began to cast the actual illusion magic. The very first thing he did was cast privacy enchantments over the room and cover himself with an illusion that mimicked his own appearance. _Those_ spells he could cast with barely a flick of his wrist, but the rest required quite a bit more work. Settling into a casting rhythm, Harry first conjured up a dramatic wind that would give the impression of an oncoming storm. Then he took several steps with actual body away from his illusory form, hiding his actual body with a simple disillusionment and the ever-intensifying wind that was forcing Dr. Weir to shield her eyes. After that the wizard began leaking _power_ into the atmosphere. Nothing too serious, but enough to get even a muggle's attention and send a few shivers down their spine at close range.

Finally, Harry started on the main attraction. His illusory form's eyes began to glow a terrible red color as it started, slowly, to grow in size. The illusion lifted its arms melodramatically and let out a laugh far too deep for human vocal chords. As the illusion grew more and more distracting, Harry took advantage of Dr. Weir's shock to conjure a sizeable cushion behind her which he immediately disillusioned. Then he refocused on the illusion, which was now reaching the height of the room they were in. Harry had the illusion crouch down and begin to glow a pale red even as a low hum filled the air, giving the impression of gathering power. Then the illusion exploded dramatically outwards, revealing its 'true form,' which resembled a gigantic classical demon with a spaded tail, black claws and horns, cloven feet, vicious teeth, and glowing red eyes. Harry heard Dr. Weir breathe in sharply in shock.

Letting out another malevolent laugh, the illusory demon gathered a ball of crimson energy in one hand, letting it grow for several seconds before throwing it down at its feet. As the energy impacted the floor, Harry cast a spell on Dr. Weir that would make her feel as though a great tremor was running through the ground underneath her, and then focused on making glowing cracks weave their way across the floor.

The demon leered hideously at Dr. Weir, then bent down and picked her up. As it did, Harry levitated her into the air, using several complicated spells to make it feel as though a demonic hand was wrapped around her body. He even filled the air around her with the odor of sulfur and a general 'demonic' stink. As the slightly panicked woman rose higher and higher into the air, Harry slid the conjured cushion under her for safety's sake. By this point the floor visible through the cushion looked downright unstable, and Harry prepared several spells for the grand finale. Then, with a tremendous _crash,_ the floor gave way, and suddenly, as far as Dr. Weir was concerned, she was falling through the depths of the earth in the hand of a gigantic demon. Harry perpetuated this sensation for around ten seconds, using a bit of perceptual trickery to make the experience feel realistic undoubtedly terrifying. The wizard was quite sure he heard a scream of terror, which was he took as his cue.

With an abrupt twist of reality and a wave of his wand, the illusions all melted away as Harry released Dr. Weir softly onto the now-visible cushion. Her scream petered out, she bounced gently on the soft surface, before limply lying there in a state of shock.

Harry cleared his throat, drawing attention to the _real_ him. "Was that an adequate demonstration, Doctor?"

"I…I would say so…" the woman said faintly. "The demon...I was falling…how did you...and the demon-"

"Breathe, Dr. Weir," Harry soothed, "everything is quite all right and I was in full control the whole time. I'll explain what happened to you in a moment. But in order to demonstrate the full effect of a proper illusion I had to show you the flashy bits first, before I demystify the whole process and ruin the effect."

The newly assigned head of Stargate Command took a deep, measured breath. Harry supposed that as a negotiator she might have experience with calming herself in times of crisis, though he doubted she'd been through anything quite like this before.

"Are you feeling better?" the wizard asked gently.

Dr. Weir nodded. "What…what was that?"

Harry smiled. "Just a bit of magical trickery and sensory manipulation. The demon was mostly visual, though the wind was real. The hardest parts was making you think that the demon had actually picked you up, and then making you feel like you were falling through an infinite void when you were really just suspended in midair a few feet off of the ground. Well, that and making sure that you didn't see the cushion before you landed on it."

Dr. Weir stared at Harry in disbelief. He understood what she was going through. Every time he saw magic do something new and exciting, or even just when he took a moment to marvel over the impressive inner volume he could give to the sleeves on his robe, he felt the same sense of awe.

"So," he said as he helped her stand up, "do I get a good recommendation?"

…

Harry stared into the empty desert, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that, at least in this reality, the Area 51 conspiracy nuts were a whole lot closer to the truth than they had any right to be. He was a bit surprised that they'd chosen Nevada as the location for his charade, but he supposed that they were already keeping the place under tight security, so one more top-secret explosion wouldn't be as difficult to explain away if someone caught on to what was happening.

Still, he thought to himself, they could at least have given him some material to work with. As it was it looked like he'd need to use the desert sand to form a solid structure that would appear on radar and any similar instruments. Flicking his wand out, Harry set about doing just that. He kept the general shape simple, because apparently the SGC did have one ship they were using to take on the scouting force, and there were real people fighting so that he'd have the time to whip up his illusory ruse.

Once he'd formed the basic shape, which ended up being a large, seven-sided crystal made entirely of glass, he began casting several enchantments on the 'weapon.' As he worked, he idly carved runes into the glass with his spare hand, ensuring that the structure would rapidly absorb magical energy from its surroundings. Despite the lack of apparent life, this location had a fair amount of magic in the air, possibly attracted by the underground experiments he'd heard someone mention.

When he was finished, the result was a crystal slowly beginning to hum with energy, preparing to put on decent show for the attackers as it gathered even more power for the explosive finale. Taking the radio he'd been given out of his pocket and removing the shielding he'd conjured for it, Harry spoke into the little device. "This is Potter. Everything's ready here."

After a slight delay the response came. "We hear you, Potter. Get ready for company."

Harry looked up into the sky. He knew he was working with the U.S. government, and he'd even heard that there was some international cooperation around the Stargate program. But still, actively inviting hostile alien warships into U.S. airspace? He shook his head in disbelief. These people were his kind of crazy.

Several minutes later, Harry noticed a bright flash in the sky above him. Casting a quick ocular aid charm, Harry could just make out one blocky ship being chased by two large…pyramid shaped ships? Well, that wasn't something you saw every day. Weapons fire was being traded both ways, and from this distance it was hard to tell whether anyone was doing better or worse. Turning to his improvised 'crystal,' Harry cracked his knuckles. "Showtime," he said aloud, grinning to himself.

To start, he activated the array of enchantments he'd cast to create a believable human research station. There were even illusory technicians running about, with realistic heat signatures and even fake heartbeats. To an outside viewer, it would look as though they had been under a cloaking field, but in reality they was just to help sell the idea that this was a haphazard construction, thrown together in desperation. Then he began pouring magic into the crystal himself, merging himself in the gathered energy until it felt like an extension of his being. And then…he fired the weapon. Initially he'd considered a ruse which involved a fake 'charge up' cycle that lasted just long enough to cause a dramatic explosion, but then he'd dismissed that as too complicated. If the weapon was to be believable, it needed to do some damage.

And as the crimson beam lanced up to strike one of the Goa'uld ships, he actually saw the ship falter a bit. That was a surprise. Either the Goa'uld's shields were weaker than he'd expected, maybe due to the ridiculous shape of their ships, or the SGC's ship had managed to do some real damage in their fight. Shaking the thought from his mind, Harry took aim at the same ship. If he could actually shoot one of the ships down, that was all the better. The second shot actually seemed to penetrate the shields, and Harry saw what was probably a plume of fire where the beam struck the ship.

That, unfortunately, was where things started to go wrong. The damaged ship began to retreat, likely seeking to get out of range of Harry's little light show. After a moment, the other ship also began to retreat, though they continued to fire on the SGC's ship even as they fled.

Whoops. Harry had forgotten that a scouting mission would prioritize returning alive over attacking an unknown weapon. The enchantments he'd imbued into the crystal to ensure that muggles ignored the beam might have been increasing the Goa'uld's wariness, as well. Getting shot at by a mysterious, half-hidden planet-based weapons platform would make most experienced warriors cautious, let alone a scouting force. He should have waited until they were closer, so that they would be more likely to engage him directly.

Even as he thought that, he saw the Goa'uld ships cease firing, probably as they left their effective weapons range. They were still inside of _his_ range, because at its core the thing was just an overpowered laser pointer, and it could shoot all the way to space, but shooting them now would defeat the purpose of the exersize. Withdrawing himself from the magic enough to avoid frying his radio, Harry got out the device. He imagined he'd need to get in contact with the SGC now that the plan had gone a bit sour, "Potter here. Sorry about that, I didn't realize that the Goa'uld were bloody cowards."

Before the SGC had a chance to respond, however, Harry noticed a bright yellow light above him and a loud humming sound. That was all the warning he got before a massive explosion rocked the desert around him, fortunately missing him by a fair margin. Fucking hell, they weren't out of range. They'd just been acquiring a new target; him!

Throwing himself back into the weapon's magic, Harry quickly fired off a shot at the still-retreating ships. In his haste, his shot went wide and missed both ships entirely. Cursing and casting a more intense magnifying charm, Harry fired another shot, and that one hit one of the ships. Probably the one he hadn't damaged, since he didn't see any explosions this time. Then the he saw both ships begin to disgorge a hailstorm of yellow energy. Suddenly remembering that this wasn't _actually_ a suicide mission, Harry pictured his lab in the SGC and apparated away as quickly as he could.

Just before he vanished, he felt a shock of heat and hot sand hit him. Then he slipped into the chaos that was apparition, and vanished.

…

Harry came to slowly, and quite painfully. It felt like his whole sandpaper had been run over his back before being pressed into him under a giant's foot. Groaning, he tried to move one of his arms. It hurt like hell, but everything seemed to work. Wiggling his toes went over pretty well too, or at least it felt like it did. Still, every move he made caused a fresh wave of pain from the rear of whatever body part he was moving. His robe had probably taken the brunt of the damage from superheated flying sand, but _damn_ did capital ships hit hard. He was lucky their second shot hadn't been much more accurate than their first.

Grunting and moaning in pain, Harry stood up and habitually checked the time with Inter. Then he stopped, frowning. At least frowning didn't hurt. Wait, no, why had nearly a day passed! Surely someone would have noticed him…oh. The aversion charm on the door to his lab had probably stopped any curious visitors. Damn! Wincing as he walked, Harry stepped over to the door and opened it. Outside was the same hallway that had been there last time he checked, with no sign of damage. It seemed they hadn't lost the fight just yet.

Making his way to the infirmary, Harry was surprised to find that there weren't any people in the halls. Normally the SGC was a fairly active workplace for all of the people keeping the place running, experimenting on samples from off-world, or running security sweeps. But during his short trek to the infirmary, he didn't meet a single soul.

When he arrived, however, the place seemed empty, though the door to Janet's office was open. Looking inside, he saw her and a few nurses hunched over a radio, which was apparently patched into the battlefield communications, because the man on the other end was talking breathlessly about glowing lights annihilating an enemy fleet. At least the decoy plan had successfully drawn in Anubis's forces, and it sounded like O'Neill was blowing them to smithereens with the Alterran drone launcher. Still, more pressing matters were currently on Harry's mind.

"Er…" Harry coughed wetly. Maybe more than just his back had taken a beating in the explosion. "Janet?"

"What…oh my God, Harry!" the Chief Medical Officer quickly slid into place as she took in Harry's condition. "What happened to you? We heard that you were killed!"

Harry grimaced. "Yeah, it's been a while since I've been in a scrape like that. Fortunately, I got out just as all the exploding _really_ got started. But…well, I may have gone and gotten myself blown up again." Harry grinned sheepishly, remembering his earlier assurances that he would avoid doing just that.

"Oh my, let's get you onto a bed. Dana, get me some morphine and disinfectant. Leanne, fetch some clean water and bandages." As the nurses rushed to get the appropriate supplies, Janet guided Harry to a bed. "Where does it hurt?"

Harry groaned. "Everywhere. Everywhere that isn't my front. Blast must have hit behind me."

"All right then, let's get you on your front then." Janet sucked in a sharp breath as he did. If his back looked anything like it felt, it probably wasn't good, but Janet was a professional, so all she said was, "I think we're going to have to get you out of that robe, Harry."

Great. And he'd have to enchant a new one after he recovered, no doubt. Still, it had done its job admirably. With slow, careful movements, the wizard gently peeled the robe off of his back, helped along by Janet's gloved hands. It almost felt like removing a second skin as they peeled it off of his wounded flesh. His underclothes, unfortunately, were in even worse shape than his robe had been. Hardly batting an eye, Janet closed the bedside curtains and offered him an open-backed medical gown that he gratefully donned after removing what was left of his shirt and pants. Then, as he lay back down on the bed, the nurses arrived with bandages, cleansing chemicals, and thankfully, morphine.

"So," Harry said as Janet set up an IV, "sounds like we won."

"Yes, we did. Your distraction worked perfectly from what I hear, and even allowed the Prometheus to disable one of the Goa'uld ships." The Prometheus? Oh, that must be the name of the SGC's ship. "And then, just a few minutes ago, Anubis and his fleet came out of hyperspace. I heard that Anubis even made an unconditional demand for surrender before they attacked. But SG-1 activated the weapon in Antarctica, and it seems to be cutting Anubis's fleet to shreds." Finishing her work with the IV, Janet gently slipped the needle into his arm. "Now, do you feel any sharp pain as you move, or is it evenly painful across your whole body?"

And with that, the SGC's Chief Medical Officer went into full-on Doctor mode, first probing gently for any broken bones, and then setting her nurses to clean his exposed skin as Janet carefully dug shrapnel out of his hair. Since he was alive, and fire wasn't about to start raining from the heavens again, Harry closed his eyes and let himself drift gently off into a morphine-induced slumber.

* * *

When he woke up, Harry saw that the infirmary was mostly empty, but a nurse who had been checking his vitals smiled kindly at him. "I see you're awake then, Mr. Potter. I'll let Dr. Frazier know, but you look like you're healing up pretty well to me." With that, she turned and left his bedside. Slowly, but not as painfully as he'd expected, Harry lifted his head from the bed. Then, finding he didn't have enough energy to keep it there, he let his head fall back onto the pillow.

Note to self; he thought, don't overextend yourself on a decoy mission. Normally he could deal with the consequences of any situation he found himself in, but it had been quite a while since the last time he'd fought in a conflict like this one.

"So, our resident wizard is awake!" Janet said a bit _too_ cheerfully as she walked up to Harry's bedside and began taking note of his vitals.

"Oh, shut it," Harry said without much heat, "I said I _probably_ wouldn't blow myself up. It wasn't even my fault this time, I barely got out of there alive!"

"If you say so," Janet said doubtfully. "Your back and backside are healing quite nicely. If this keeps up we can probably even start weaning you off of the morphine. You weren't kidding when you said that wizards are tougher than they look."

"Yes, well," Harry said, "I think my robe absorbed a lot of the damage, at least from the flying debris."

"Really?" Janet sounded surprised. "What's it made of?"

Harry smiled. "Homespun cotton, actually. It's easiest to enchant a piece of clothing if you weave it yourself. I'm probably going to have to make a new one, now…"

Janet blinked, twice, but took that in stride. "Well, Sam and Dr. Weir both wanted to speak to you. I'll go let them know that you're awake."

Sam wanted to see him? Harry idly wondered what that was about as he waited. A nurse brought him some food and he ate it awkwardly, unable to roll off of his front side and having to carefully move very carefully to avoid inflaming his wounds.

Just as he was finishing his canned pineapple and lasagna, Sam walked in. "Harry! We heard that you'd been blown up by the scouting force. What happened?"

She hadn't heard the whole story yet? "I got out in the nick of time," Harry said glibly. "Well…almost."

"We heard that your position was completely annihilated by fire from the Goa'uld motherships! There was even some damage to the underground Area 51 facility! How on Earth did you get out of that alive?"

Harry sighed. "I suppose it had to come out sooner or later. I can teleport from one place to another, as long as I can visualize the destination. I can't go to the moon or anything, but I can go anywhere on a planet that I've been before, and even into a low orbit, if there's something to land on. I uh…didn't realize I needed to get out of there until they started shooting at me, and by then it was almost too late. And since I landed behind my wards, no one found me until I woke up."

Sam hesitated before responding to that, and sounded quite concerned when she asked, "Are you…all right?"

Harry smiled. "Oh, Janet's patching me up nicely. It sounds like I'll be out of here in a few days or so."

"Really? That's…impressive."

"Yes, well, as much as I'd like to claim that 'us wizards are just made of sterner stuff,' the truth is more that it's been a while since I got into a fight like this, and I _might_ have gotten a bit rusty. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20."

"Yeah, it really is, isn't it?" From the look on Sam's face, the woman was quite familiar with the uncomfortable clarity of hindsight. "Well, thanks for helping out with the diversion. I'm not sure the Prometheus would have held out against three Goa'uld ships on its own. It certainly would have been a lot closer without you there."

"You're certainly welcome. I wish that it hadn't gone down like it did, but I'll always help out when your lives are on the line. It'd be irresponsible not to."

Sam gave Harry a grateful look. "Well, thank you for that. Your help was greatly appreciated by the crew of the Prometheus. They were actually talking about making a memorial to you on the ship before we found out you were alive."

The thought made Harry smile. "Well, I wouldn't say no to a monument or two anyway. It's nice to see my help is appreciated." Tilting his head carefully, the wizard gave Sam a playful wink.

Before Sam could come up with a response to that, Dr. Weir entered the infirmary, and immediately made a beeline for Harry's bed. "Harry! What happened to you?"

The wizard rolled his eyes. "I didn't realize that the Goa'uld had stopped shooting at your ship so that they could lock onto me, and when I apparated out I landed behind wards that were designed specifically to keep you out. I'm lucky the infirmary was near my lab, because I wasn't in very good shape when I came to."

Dr. Weir looked positively alarmed. "You were unconscious in your lab for a whole day?"

"Yeah, I'm probably going to be toning the wards on my lab down a bit. I…probably should have done that sooner, but…" Harry sighed. "I probably shouldn't have put wards like that on my lab at all, honestly, but…I did have plenty to hide. I originally intended to slowly let Sam and the other technicians in on the knowledge I've acquired in my travels, but I wanted to control what you learned, and when, so that you didn't accidentally misuse what you learned. But now…well, now you have access to the Alteran database, and that changes the situation. Among other things, I'd really like to work closely with the team that's studying the database, and that'll be a lot easier if I'm not hiding behind aversion wards all day."

"That…could possibly be arranged," Weir said. "I would check with the President about sharing such an important task with an outsider, but he's actually requested that you meet with him yourself at your earliest convenience. I get the feeling that he wants to thank you for all that you've done for us. Something that I would also like to do, honestly. I can't thank you enough for all that you've gone through on our behalf."

Harry smiled. "Don't sweat it. I've been through worse scrapes for stupider reasons. At least this time I get a cool war story out of the experience."

Dr. Weir raised here eyebrows skeptically at that. "You nearly died, and you're already thinking about the stories you'll be able to tell later?"

"Yes." Harry giggled a little. "I mean…I survived a direct hit from a capital ship's orbital bombardment. Sure, it hurt like a bitch and I actually only survived because I ran away like a pansy, but it sounds so much better if I leave that part out."

"Alright," a pleasant female voice came from behind Harry, "you've had your talk, ladies. It's time to leave our resident wizard to healing. He may act like he's fine, but he needs his rest!"

And just like that, Janet hastily shooed Dr. Weir and Sam out of the infirmary, refusing to take no for an answer. Harry smiled. Nurses, he thought to himself. They were the same anywhere you went. He felt a gentle hand feeling around his arm where his IV was connected.

"So how are you feeling?" Janet asked conversationally.

"I'm fine," Harry said, "Did you have to scare off the company?"

Janet sighed. "Harry, with the drugs running through your system, I'm frankly impressed you're speaking intelligibly. You should really be sleeping right now, but it seems that it's harder to keep a wizard unconscious than I thought."

Harry grinned goofily at her. "What can I say, it's hard to keep me down. I consider that one of my many charms."

Janet raised her eyebrows at him as she fiddled a bit with the IV. "Get some sleep, Harry. You need your rest." As she walked away, Harry tried to come up with a response, but he suddenly felt quite sluggish, and the bed was _very_ comfortable. Hmm, maybe he'd get a bit of shut-eye after all. Doctor's advice was usually a good thing to listen to.

* * *

 **A/N: Woo! New chapter! Sorry this one took so long to get out, but it's sort of a big moment in the timeline, and I had a lot of trouble making the sure the whole thing…felt right. I've said it before, but it's still true; crossing Harry Potter with Stargate is** _ **really**_ **difficult to pull off unless you want Harry to turn into a self-righteous prick, or just completely alter his power set to nerf him. (Altering Harry's abilities to better fit the plot has been done, by the way. If that sounds interesting to you, check out** _ **Per Ardua Ad Astra,**_ **by In Defilade. It's a great story, though it's sadly abandoned.) I also wanted to do the battle with Anubis its due justice, since it was a huge moment in the show where the SGC finally proved that it could hold its own…sort of, against the Goa'uld. But on top of that, this chapter also became an essential turning point in Harry's character arc that I wasn't expecting, so I had to take a bit to figure out how to do it right. Again, I'm sorry about the long wait!**

 **In other news, I fixed the Alterran/Alteran thing, because I happen to know from experience just how irritating one consistently misspelled word can be to a reader. I also re-read and tweaked the previous chapters. There were no major changes, so you don't have to re-read them yourself or anything, but it was slightly more than just grammatical changes. Clarifications of technobabble, more streamlined plotting, that sort of thing. And apparently this website's text editor doesn't like long numbers with decimals, so I had to put commas in the astro-date that I had Harry spout off. Did that really just show up as Harry saying that the astro-date was " R" and no one thought it was weird, or is the text editor lying to me about what shows up in the actual chapters?**

 **Guestinator, I appreciate your review, and you brought up some good points. Also, your name is great. Still, if you want a response to that many specific issues, you're going to have to get a (free) account so that I can PM you back. Among other things, this website doesn't send me the whole text of long reviews in notification emails, and the easiest way for me to read your whole review is just to click the reply link. But that's a little hard when there is no reply link, as is the case for guest reviews. Oh, and half of the issues you had are handily addressed in this chapter, I think. I didn't even plan that, I just happen to have a vague idea of where this story is going, so not everything that looks like an issue will continue to be one going forward. ;D**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	8. Healing and Politicking

**A/N: As one memorable guest reviewer said, "It lives!" No, this story's not dying any time soon. It won't end until there's peace in the Pegasus Galaxy. How long it will take for there to be peace in the Pegasus Galaxy...well, that I don't actually know yet, especially if we're talking real-world time here. In-story I have a bit more of an idea what's going on. ;P**

* * *

Harry woke very slowly. As he tried to make sense of his surroundings, he felt a certain…swimming sensation, as though he were floating in the ocean. But he could still feel the mattress beneath him, and when he opened his eyes he saw the empty infirmary. The infirmary...wait. Which infirmary was this again?

 _Inter, have I been drugged?_ Harry asked blearily.

Inter gave the mental equivalent of a snort. _I think Janet got sick of you waking up when you weren't supposed to. You've been just shy of catatonic for a few days now._

Oh. That's right. The SGC. The Goa'uld. The Alteran drone weapon. His own overly-effective 'distraction' weapon. The pain of a near-miss from capital ship-grade weaponry. _Well,_ Harry mused, _at least we won._

"Are you awake, Harry?" Janet's voice penetrated his thoughts.

Harry glanced over at the approaching Doctor. "Ugh, no thanks to you. I hear you nearly put me into a coma."

"What? Where did you hear that?" Janet asked.

 _Oh boy_ , Inter commented, _you really are out of it, aren't you? You're not usually this free with your secrets. And I'm not usually this talkative. I think the drugs are affecting me through the neural link._

"Damn," Harry said aloud. "I...Janet...I'll tell you about it later. Need to flush these damn drugs out of my system first, they're making my mind fuzzy."

"You _should_ be unconscious with all the morphine in your system," Janet said primly, "If you hadn't warned me that wizards metabolize drugs differently I would be alarmed that you're even conscious right now. As it is, I can't help but wonder how you overheard the nurses talking about your condition while you were in a nearly catatonic state."

"It's like I said, wizards don't work quite the same as muggles," Harry said, slowly pushing himself into a sitting position. And then it hit him. "Wait...my back doesn't hurt."

Janet actually laughed at that. "I've taken you off of your drugs because you're now healed enough to get up and move around without re-injuring yourself. You might feel a little delicate once the morphine wears off, and you shouldn't do anything physically strenuous for at least two weeks. But the wounds on your back have closed up, for the most part, and they're well on their way to fully healing. As long as you don't get yourself blown up again, you should be fully recovered."

Harry held his face in his hands and groaned. "I suppose you definitely won't believe me if I try to say that I really won't blow myself up this time?"

Chuckling lightly, Janet raised her clipboard. "Not a chance. Now, how are you feeling?"

Harry stared at her in disbelief. "How do you think? I feel like my brain is made of wet cotton and I'm still getting used to the fact that I've been in a drugged-up coma for the better part of a week."

Janet tilted her head curiously. "You were aware of the passing time?"

Harry sighed. "No. It's...complicated."

"If you feel up to explaining I must admit I'm curious," Janet said, "The ability to recall things that happened while you yourself were so deeply unconscious could prove invaluable, if you're willing to share it."

"Well…" Harry trailed off, considering whether or not he should share details about Inter. In the end, he figured it couldn't hurt. "It's not really what you're thinking, actually. Do you remember the database I created for O'Neill?" Janet nodded. "The one I created for myself is...well, it's sort of tucked away in my head. It keeps track of time better than I do, even when I'm unconscious. It also...well, it's actually how I knew you'd drugged me so much. It can monitor my health, to a degree, and it told me it thought you'd gotten sick of me waking up when I was supposed to be asleep. Little bugger sounded pretty amused about the whole thing, actually." Harry felt his face redden in embarrassment. Damn drugs were loosening his tongue.

"Your...database...said that?" Janet asked hesitantly, "Is it alive?"

Harry's head fell back into his hands. "I shouldn't have told you about...its opinions. That's...a whole can of worms I prefer not to get into." Quickly gathering his thoughts, and feeling Inter attempt to reinforce his rational mind, Harry attempted to explain. "He...I call the interface...Inter. It's not alive exactly, but...it's sort of got a personality. I think that's because I put so many of my own memories in it, and they rubbed off or something. It used to be much more...robotic, but now...well, Inter is almost sassy."

Janet took a moment to come to terms with that. "And…why didn't this…Inter show up in any of your X-rays or MRIs?"

"Because there's so much magic in my body that you probably didn't notice the artificial fold in space that I tucked him into. It...I can try to explain the science behind that to Sam later, if you want."

"I see." Janet said, pausing to write several notes on her clipboard. When she finished, she looked up.

"Well...other than that how are you feeling? Are you in any pain?"

Harry laughed mirthlessly. "I think I've still got too much morphine in me for that. Come back in an hour, I'll tell you how I'm really feeling."

…

Two hours later, Harry had been released from the infirmary, conditional on a daily checkup. Janet still wasn't completely convinced that he'd processed all of the morphine in his system, but she couldn't argue with multiple cognitive tests and a blood sample. In the end she decided that it was yet another reason he would need to come back for regular check-ups. Harry had resigned himself to smiling and nodding at confused nurses and doctors long before he'd even left his own reality, so he accepted Janet's confusion with equanimity.

Once he was free of the infirmary, Harry collected the remains of his robes, dressed himself in the Air Force coveralls Janet had given him, and then made his way to Sam's laboratory.

When he arrived, Harry saw that, as usual, Sam was surrounded by gadgets and complicated tools she no doubt used for disassembling and studying said gadgets.

"What are you looking at this time?" he asked.

Sam glanced up at him, no longer surprised by his sudden questions about her work. "Just something SG-10 picked up on P3X-213 a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure it's dead, but it looks like it might have been based on Ancient engineering. Or Alteran engineering, I guess. That's going to take some getting used to."

"Don't need my help with this one then?" Harry asked.

"No." Sam finished her metallic surgery, holding the complex bit of circuitry she'd just removed from the dead device up to the light. "This one shouldn't be too hard to figure out." She set the piece of circuitry next to the device and laid down her tools. "So, what do you need?"

Harry held up the remains of his robes. "I need a new set of robes, and I thought you might like to watch how I go about weaving them. It should help you with your warding project, since it involves a lot of defensive runic work. I'll even give you these old rags once I've gotten the extra-dimensional pocket emptied out."

Sam stared almost hungrily at the robes. "The...extra-dimensional pocket? Does that mean…?"

"Yes, it does." Harry flicked his wrist at the sleeve, then frowned. That should have shot his wand out. "It seems that is was damaged in the orbital strike, but fortunately it's little more than a sort of 'portal' into a pocket of space where I store things like my wand and whatever other useful bits and bobs I find. The first order of business is going to be fixing that portal, since most of what I need to make a new set of robes is in that pocket space."

"Can you teach me how this...extra-dimensional portal works?" Sam asked eagerly.

Harry smiled. "When you've figured out why you shouldn't call hyperspace 'subspace,' we can talk. For now, I'll let you watch as I stitch up the rune work. You should have enough questions about that to keep yourself plenty occupied."

"All right then," Sam said, "give me a few minutes to tidy up here, and I'll meet you in your lab."

"I'll see you there."

…

When Sam walked into Harry's lab, she looked quite surprised. To be fair, that was a pretty reasonable reaction, because at that moment Harry was using his wand as a conductor's baton to carefully control all of the various objects floating about in his lab. And said objects were quite surprising on their own, never mind their current ignorance of gravity's eternal demands. The specially-enchanted sword was fairly self-explanatory, but the same couldn't be said about the silvery metal blob that swished past Sam's head as she entered the room, or many of the other odd bits and bobs that Harry had picked up over the years.

As it had turned out, the only reason that Harry hadn't been able to retrieve his wand earlier was because it had been lying, forgotten, in his lab. He'd discovered this rather embarrassing fact upon re-entering his lab and noticing it lying on the floor. In the confusion of waking up after the battle, Harry had completely forgotten about his wand and left it behind on his way to the infirmary. The extra-dimensional sleeve, on the other hand, was still working well enough that he could summon out the contents and take inventory, so he'd started that process as he waited for Sam.

"Hey Sam," Harry greeted her, "Turns out the extra-dimensional pocket wasn't as broken as I thought. I'm just sorting through all the junk I kept in there; I'll be with you in a moment."

Sam stared in awe as Harry vanished several objects of the 'seemed like a good idea to keep at the time' variety and carefully stacked the rest in a corner.

"What...what was that?" Sam asked, "What did you do with those things that disappeared?"

Harry grinned. He loved confronting scientists with the nonsensicality of magic. "No, I obliterated them from existence. It's a spell I was taught when I was 13 years old, though thankfully it's in a class of spells that simply don't work on animate objects and beings."

"You...obliterated them. From existence."

"Yep. We call it the vanishing charm."

"And you can just...do that."

"Yep." Harry nodded.

"And it doesn't cause a devastating explosion of energy comparable to a nuclear bomb."

"Nope."

"...huh."

 _Wait, that's it?_ "You know," Harry said aloud, "you aren't nearly as surprised as I expected you to be."

"I travel through a stable wormhole to other planets, and that's just my day job," Sam stated bluntly, "After a while, you learn to just accept the impossible and go with the flow."

 _Well that's no fun._ Harry very nearly pouted. "Anyway, you're here to watch me craft a magical robe," he said, conjuring several long, loose cotton strands "so what do you say we get down to business?"

Harry found guiding Sam through the process of weaving a magical robe rather exhausting. As usual, she was full of questions, most of which were surprisingly insightful. To her dismay, Harry didn't tell her exactly _how_ the enchantments he wove into the fabric worked, just what they did. But what Sam was most interested in were the runes. In an effort to accommodate her, Harry frequently stopped his process to show Sam the runic form of the enchantments he was weaving into the thread as he spun the fibers together, and then the combinations of enchantments he created as he wove the thread into fabric, and finally the black-on-black runes he wove into the surface of the robe itself.

"Basically," Harry summarized, "this robe will keep me clean, comfortable, warm, and dry at all times. And on top of that it's more bulletproof than kevlar, as flexible as silk, stretchier than rubber when it needs to be, enchanted specifically so that it won't get in the way of any acrobatics I might attempt, and it even billows dramatically if I'm in the mood for that. You just can't beat the customizability of enchanting a robe from start to finish, and the fact that the thread is made from conjured strands just makes it even easier to work with."

"...wow." Sam breathed, slowly taking in the list of feats she would likely have thought impossible for a mere garment before watching Harry literally weave them into his robe. "And that isn't even everything, is it? There were runes you didn't explain in there, and probably some enchantments too."

Harry smiled. "Good eye you've got there, Sam. And yes, I didn't just show you _all_ of my tricks, but you must understand that just as the SGC can't possibly fully trust me yet, I can't fully trust any of you. Of all the people I've interacted with, I definitely trust you the most, Sam, but I would still expect you to follow orders and divulge what you've seen here. I was even counting on it, actually. We're in the early stages of...I guess you could call this an alliance of sorts, and teaching you about my robes was meant as a gesture of goodwill."

"A gesture of goodwill where you're openly keeping secrets?"

"Sam, no alliance I've ever been a part of has ever involved full disclosure," Harry said. "For one thing, it would simply take too long for you and I to sit down and discuss all of our secrets with each other. But I would also hope that it isn't necessary. If I know something that you and the SGC need to be aware of, I'll tell you. In return, I hope you and the SGC will extend me the same courtesy. It's just...well, there's a lot of politics involved in this situation, no matter how much you and I might dislike them."

Sam sighed. "Isn't there some way to just...I don't know, bypass the politics?"

"Bypass the politics?" Harry chuckled at that. "I wish it were that easy, Sam, but during relatively peaceful times like this, politics are all we've got. If it helps, I give you my solemn vow that I'll deal with the people of this Earth truthfully and honestly, but I definitely can't avoid the politicians. Your President already wants to meet with me, and I'm essentially working as a consultant for the Air Force. There's no way to do that without getting mired in politics."

"Indeed, though we might desperately wish to escape them, politics make the world go 'round," a voice came from the doorway of the lab.

Turning, Harry saw Dr. Weir standing there, apparently having heard some of the conversation. "Well," he said with some amusement, "speak of the devil and she will appear."

Dr. Weir quirked an eyebrow. "Am I that bad?"

Harry laughed out loud. "No, of course not, Doctor! It's a joke. A bit of humor to lighten these dark times. We defeated Anubis, surely we can enjoy a good joke!"

The corners of Dr. Weir's mouth slipped upwards. "Well, I can hardly argue with that. I've never been much good at it myself, but a decent joke can do more good than a whole afternoon of peace talks." Dr. Weir's near-smile faded. "Unfortunately, I'm here to discuss that meeting with the President that you were talking about. He's open tomorrow at 7PM, Eastern Time, if that works for you."

Harry considered that. "It's not exactly like I'm busy here. I can make time for the most powerful man in the free world. How much time do you think I should allow for getting through security?"

"Oh, 30 minutes at most. The process is quite streamlined for personal visitors to the Oval Office. But I do feel I should warn you that Vice President Kinsey will be at the meeting as well. In light of your...actions, the Vice President seems to want to turn over a new leaf."

Harry carefully avoided expressing his doubts about that out loud. Kinsey probably just wanted to sucker up to Harry now that he'd advertised a military application for his skills. "I'll be sure to keep that in mind, Doctor. Thank you for the forewarning."

Dr. Weir nodded in acknowledgement. "Well, I suppose I'll leave you two to it, unless you had anything you wanted to talk to me about."

Harry glanced at Sam, then said, "Actually, we were just finishing up here. It might be advantageous for you and Sam to discuss what she's learned right away, while it's still fresh."

Sam actually snorted at that. "You just want us to leave you alone so you can sort out your trinkets, don't you?"

"Oh, Sam," Harry said, pretending to be hurt, "you know me too well."

Sam rolled her eyes at him. "We'll leave you to sort your toys, then."

"Hey," Harry objected weakly as the two blondes turned to leave, "they're not toys, they're incredibly awesome gadgets that can do things beyond your wildest imagination!"

The two women exchanged a knowing glance, and then Weir said, "Well…we'll just leave you to your 'incredibly awesome gadgets' then, Mr. Potter. Enjoy yourself...and try not to have too much fun."

And with that, they left, closing the door behind them. Harry stared after them, speechless. Dr. Weir had said that she was terrible with jokes, but had she been...teasing him? Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Harry turned to the stack of incredibly awesome gadgets in the corner. One of them warbled suspiciously.

"Oh come on," Harry said, "don't give me that."

A suspicious silence followed his proclamation.

"Oh, sod it all," Harry muttered to himself. Now he was talking to them despite being...fairly certain none of his gadgets could properly respond to human speech. That probably wasn't a good sign.

* * *

Harry checked with Inter. 6:55 PM, Eastern US time local. He idly straightened his robes, wondering how the meeting he was about to enter would go. On the one hand, he'd heard good things about President Hayes. On the other hand...Kinsey. It would be interesting to see how the two interacted with each other. From what Harry could tell, their agendas were likely to come into conflict regarding his treatment. Kinsey would want to exploit Harry in any and every way possible, but President Hayes would likely want to build an amicable relationship. At that thought, the wizard grinned to himself. This was going to be fun.

In front of him, the curved door to the oval office opened. Several men and one woman, all wearing neatly-tailored suits and completely impassive expressions, walked out. None of them sparing the waiting wizard so much as a glance. A woman with a vaguely secretarial look about her closed the door behind them, but Harry could tell she took note of his presence. Sure enough, not even a full minute later she exited the Oval Office herself, pausing only to say, "The President and Vice President will see you now," before going off about her business.

Harry didn't pause to look around the Oval Office. He'd seen it enough to know about what to expect, so instead of taking in the sights, he looked at the people he was there to meet. President Hayes, of course, sat behind his desk, a friendly smile on his face. Kinsey, by contrast, glared at Harry from his position directly to the left of the President.

Harry smiled. "Now now Mr. Kinsey, is that any way to look at a man who helped save your life?"

If anything, Kinsey's expression soured further. "You were saving your own hide as much as anyone else's, I'm sure."

Harry laughed out loud at that. "Oh, I could have left any time I wanted. If you think the SGC is capable of stopping me from using your 'Stargate' you're sadly mistaken. And that's not accounting for the fact that leaving this reality, and by extension this planet, doesn't require anything more than five minutes of my time. No, Mr. Kinsey, I'm afraid my decision to stay and fight wasn't entirely a selfish one."

Kinsey looked ready to respond, but the President cut him off. "That's enough, Bob. We're here to talk to Mr. Potter, not rake him over the coals."

Bob? Harry struggled to hide his surprise. He wouldn't have expected a man like Kinsey to go by such a common name. "I glad to hear that, Mr. President. I'm not especially fond of being raked over the coals, as it were."

Kinsey's expression became even worse, if it was possible. The Vice President probably didn't like being called by his first name in such a high-profile meeting. To his credit, however, he refrained from commenting.

"So," Harry said, "Why am I here? I know I have a lot I'd like to talk to you about, Mr. President, but it was you who issued the summons."

The President smiled widely. "Well first off Mr. Potter, I'd like to thank you for all of your efforts in the recent battle with the Goa'uld. From the sound of it you got quite banged up defending this planet, and as one of the many leaders of this world I'd like to extend my gratitude toward you. If you need a favor or three, don't hesitate to ask. George had a lot of good things to say about you, and I hope I can look forward to working with you moving forward."

Harry took a moment to let that sink in. "I assume that you're talking about General Hammond? I didn't know the two of you were so close."

The President let out an easy laugh. "Oh, George and I go way back. We served together, once upon a time. He asked me to thank you, by the way. He was in command of the Prometheus, and he told me to tell you that he has you to thank for the lives of his men once again."

Harry inclined his head, accepting the indirect thanks. "Well I would be delighted if we could start building an amicable relationship. From what I've been hearing around the SGC, they've been after an Alteran city for some time now, and that sounds like _exactly_ the sort of thing I've been looking for. In fact, I don't mind saying that it's pretty much become my raison d'être for…longer than I care to admit."

That caught the President's attention. "Oh? And what do you mean by that?"

Harry paused for a moment, considering, but in the end he had nothing to lose by telling them, even if Kinsey wanted to make life difficult. "Well, I don't know how thoroughly you've been briefed on my abilities, Mr. President, but they have a tendency to make complex machinery go haywire. Alteran technology, however, doesn't have that problem. It even seems to harness what I'd call magic as it goes about doing things like creating wormholes. And…well." Despite having resolved to tell the two men about his problems, Harry still hesitated for a moment. But then he quashed his worries before they could get the better of him.

"There's also the fact, Mr. President, that I don't actually have full control over the ritual that transports me from reality to reality. The first time I traveled was quite by accident, and even after I figured out how I'd done it, I never have figured out how to get back…home." Even just mentioning his original reality, Harry's voice broke. Memories of his friends, his comrades…no. Now wasn't the time for sorrow. "So…I did the only thing I could. I kept traveling, moving forward, researching the deeper mysteries of magic, trying to find a way to control my travel between dimensions. And then, after hundreds of years of searching…I found a wormhole ring that _controls_ magic in specially-designed circuitry and harnesses the result to catapult matter across an entire _galaxy._ It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's the closest I've come since…well, ever."

There was a long silence as the men in front of Harry absorbed what he'd just told them. Finally, after several long minutes of contemplation, President Hayes spoke, asking, "You said…you've been searching for several _hundred_ years? If you don't mind my asking, just how old are you?"

Harry smiled. That was an old question, but he always enjoyed answering it. "I haven't kept an incredibly precise count, actually. It's difficult to do so when each new reality measures time slightly differently. But according to Inter, who's kept count as well as any computer, I'm about 500 Earth years old, getting close to 550."

"How…" Kinsey choked out, "how is that even possible?"

Harry smirked. He'd finally managed to break through the man's hostility. "I'd like to keep that to myself, if you don't mind. If it helps, it's not something anyone without magic flowing through their veins could pull off. It also went so disastrously wrong that I'm not entirely certain I could replicate the process."

And just like that, Kinsey was back to his usual self. "You mean to tell me that you discovered a means to live forever and you've never looked further into it? I find that hard to believe."

"Why would I look further into immortality? I'm demonstrably immortal, and I haven't met many witches or wizards who were especially interested in outliving everyone they ever knew and loved." That successfully put a damper on Kinsey's attitude, so Harry decided to press further. "But even discounting that, I would never tell _you,_ Mr. Kinsey. Ignoring the fact that you're technically a representative of a nation I'm amicable with, you're an incredibly unpleasant, manipulative person, and you could very well have doomed the entire planet with your hair-brained scheme to take over the SGC. That is simply _not_ the kind of person I would trust with the secret of immortality."

President Hayes sat up straighter. "I'm sorry, did you say that my Vice President was endangering the entire _planet?"_

Harry nodded. "In a manner of speaking. The SGC was working on ways to fight the oncoming invasion, and Kinsey was trying to shut them down and discredit their claims that the Earth was in any danger at all. If Doctor Weir wasn't so good at telling lies from truth, he may very well have succeeded." Seeing that President Hayes was getting quite upset, Harry quickly added, "Now, despite having previously accused him of doing so willfully, I rather doubt his actions were anything more than an ignorant power-grab, in hindsight. But still, he showed a remarkable talent for ignoring the evidence and also a rather insatiable greed, now that I know what he was after. So, all things being accounted for, I think I'm justified in not liking him."

President Hayes slowly turned to Kinsey, and Harry thought he saw the latter swallow nervously.

"Bob," the President asked dangerously, "Is this true?"

Harry could see the denial on Kinsey's face, so he decided to interject. "You know, Mr. Kinsey, that President Hayes can easily check with the others involved in the incident. I would consider being honest, and quite possibly begging for mercy. No matter what you think you can accomplish on your own, I think you're going to need the President's goodwill going forward."

This quite clearly gave Kinsey pause. As President Hayes continued to stare him down, the politician was clearly struggling to come up with something to say. Eventually, his shoulders slumped. "It's true." He said simply, but he didn't leave it there. "I wasn't acting alone, though. There are… _others_." Harry noted the heavy emphasis, and perhaps even fear put into such a simple word. "They…they already won't be happy with me, and I'm afraid the wizard is right. I'm probably going to need all the help I can get to avoid their wrath."

Now _that_ was interesting. "These _others…_ " Harry said, "do you think it's possible they could have been trying to do what I accused you of doing? Stalling Earth's defenses long enough to overcome them?"

"I don't know," Kinsey said, sighing. "I find it hard to believe. They've always professed a strong desire to rid this planet of aliens, or else use said aliens to their advantage. But lately…I just don't know."

After a long moment, President Hayes turned to Harry. "Mr. Potter, you've given me a lot to think about, and a lot to discuss with my Vice President, as well. You can rest assured, I'll do everything in my power to help you get back home, though I hope you'll be around long enough to help us with our own problems. At the moment, however, I would greatly appreciate it if you allowed me to discuss what has been revealed here…privately."

Harry bowed his head in acknowledgement. "Of course, Mr. President. It's been a pleasure meeting with you."

"Likewise, Mr. Potter." The President extended a hand, and Harry shook it. Then Harry left, mind racing. He hadn't really expected the meeting to go that way. It was nice, to be sure, and it seemed like he'd even helped reveal the true nature of Kinsey to President Hayes. But what would it all mean going forward?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

* * *

 **A/N: Special thanks to Chuck from the DPSW Discord server, who helped me plot out the scene with Kinsey and President Hayes. Honestly, that scene just** _ **did not**_ **want to be written. Now that we're past it, hopefully there won't be any more extended gaps between chapter postings.**

 **Hopefully.**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **feauxen**

 **(and because it's been so long, here's a little teaser)**

 _Next time: Harry and the SGC figure out how, exactly, they're going to get to Atlantis, and what they might do once they've gotten there._


	9. Getting ready to go

**A/N: Thank you, Diddly Dum, for telling me that I was dosing Harry with 'structures of language that cannot further be divided' rather than hospital-grade pain medication. Spell-check is nice and all, but it just doesn't catch stuff like that.**

 **Also, quick update. I've changed the character list (I can unfortunately only put four into the list that appears with the summary) due to a significant shift in my plans for Harry's time in Atlantis. Said shift actually happened quite a while ago, but I didn't realize that I needed to change my characters until a very nice Guest left a delectably long and thoughtful review. Thank you to said Guest, by the way.**

 **Anyway, back to the story!**

* * *

Harry sneezed loudly, and then quickly recast the warming charm over his head, hands, and feet. Sure, his _robe_ stayed warm, even in the Antarctic outpost that had been established in the aftermath of the battle with the Goa'uld, but unfortunately he hadn't thought to sew in runes that would extend that bubble of warmth over his head and extremities, and even his best warming charm only lasted for about 14 hours. He'd have to put in more complicated temperature runes next time, he supposed idly to himself before continuing on to his destination: Elizabeth Weir's office.

The good Doctor had become something of a fixture at the Antarctic outpost ever since her reassignment from command of the SGC. Originally, Harry had been under the impression that she was only there to help smooth over international relations between the frankly alarming number of jurisdictions that were being claimed in the area. Apparently, the Russian government had even tried to kick up a fuss about a Stargate that had been excavated nearby a few years earlier, one which had been destroyed several months earlier. Dr. Weir, however, had simply done her research, discovered the fact that the U.S. government was paying a sizeable amount of rent to the Russian government for use of the Stargate the SGC currently used, and used that information as a compelling reason for the Russians to back down. It's a bad idea to upset the government who consistently pays you large sums of money, after all.

But that wasn't why Harry was heading to a meeting with Dr. Weir. In all likelihood, politics would find their way into the meeting at some point, but Harry had the distinct impression that, unlike a majority of the Russians, Dr. Weir actually enjoyed having a wizard wandering around the place.

Harry found Dr. Weir's door open, as usual.

"Ah, Harry! Come in, I've been meaning to talk to you," Weir greeted him.

"What a coincidence," he said with a smile, "I came here for that exact same reason."

Weir returned his smile. "I'm glad that we're on the same page. Now if only I could be so lucky with all of our other foreign 'guests.'"

Harry raised an eyebrow at the emphasis. "Are the Russians really still trying to stake their claim on this place? The location was quite clearly universally undesirable before a Stargate was discovered here."

Weir let out a weary sigh. "No, they've withdrawn that claim. Still, I rather doubt they'd take kindly to being called 'guests' to their face. On paper it's true, but you know what they say…"

"That I do, Doctor," Harry said, "that I do. But that's not what I came here to talk about."

"No, you came here to tell me your side of the story," Weir said knowingly, "And I'm quite glad you did. I've just gotten done listening to a certain general ranting about you and your research requests."

"What?" Harry asked. "Do you mean O'Neill? I think he's always a bit irritable, to be honest. It doesn't help that he's still used to being a man of action, and he's not really used to sitting in the big chair quite yet." Dr. Weir raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything. "No," Harry said, "I'm actually here to request official permission to study the circuits surrounding this outpost's potentia socket. I don't necessarily need to remove the potentia from the socket to study the inner workings of the circuitry, but I feel that I should run the request by all the important people around here before I go poking around."

Weir's lips quirked skyward. "So, you _do_ want permission to study the power source of Earth's most valuable Alteran weapon."

Harry frowned. "That's what O'Neill was complaining about, isn't it?"

Weir nodded. "Yes. It was. He was rather vehement in his assertion that jurisdiction over the weapon remains _firmly_ under military control."

"Did he at least mention that I mostly just want to study it so that I can help manufacture more potentia for us to use? The thing won't last forever, after all, and I'm fairly certain that you'll need my help constructing more. A potentia's inner workings are too much like magic for someone uninitiated in the ebb and flow of magic to make much headway without my help."

Dr. Weir quirked her head thoughtfully. "He did mention that, yes, though it sounded more like he was worried that you might keep some for yourself instead of sharing them with us."

Harry smiled pleasantly. "I gave the SGC full access to the Alteran database, did I not? What reason would he have to suspect that I might treat him unfairly?"

"You'd have to ask him that, I think," Weir said carefully, "but I get the feeling you can understand our concern. According to Samantha Carter, even the partially-drained potentia we recovered from the other abandoned outpost has the power to destroy our whole planet many times over."

Harry laughed out loud at that. "Yes, Doctor Weir. It does. But so does your Stargate, and you've kept that around, haven't you? From what I hear, there was even an incident where the SGC's Stargate nearly vaporized your whole planet. One could argue that I would be downright irresponsible to give you _any_ potentia."

Weir considered that for several long seconds before replying. "You haven't made any attempt to confiscate the potentia that powers the outpost's weapon."

Harry grinned. Pointed comments like that were why he truly enjoyed verbally sparring with Doctor Weir. "No, I haven't. In fact, if someone did try to argue that humanity isn't ready and all that brouhaha, I'd be the first to say they were wrong. Not only has the SGC performed admirably in the time I've been watching, the simple fact that the SGC still exists is evidence that you are, in fact, ready. It would be irresponsible of me not to stick around and make sure that nothing I've done leads to your downfall, of course, but I've seen no evidence that something like that would happen."

"So if you discovered a means to manufacture potentia, you would share them with us?" Weir asked.

Harry nodded. "I would. I probably wouldn't even keep any for myself. It's not worth the trust I would lose, and I don't really have a use for the universe's biggest battery at the moment."

Weir's reply was lost, however, as Harry was suddenly distracted by a mental signal from his wards. Someone was trying to get into his quarters without permission.

"—objections from me. I'll discuss the matter further with General—"

"Yes, thank you Doctor," Harry interrupted her, "but I'm afraid a matter of some importance has just come up. Someone is trying to break the wards protecting my quarters without permission. If I may, I'd like to apprehend the individual before they realize their efforts are futile."

Weir's eyes widened dramatically. "Well...yes, of course, by all means. But…would you like an escort?"

Harry considered the question. Whoever the intruder was, they'd only just started their work,. He could afford to wait. "Yes, that would be much appreciated. It's difficult to be _too_ cautious, after all."

Smiling warmly, Weir picked up the phone on her desk. The warmth of her expression quickly fell behind a mask of professionalism as she ordered a squad of marines to her office to escort Harry. They arrived promptly, and after clarifying the details of the situation, Harry led the marines along the most direct route from Weir's office to his quarters.

As they walked, Harry wondered idly who he might find toying around with his wards this time. No one currently on the base had his permission to attempt to deconstruct his wards, although depending on the disposition of the current curious individual that could change soon. Despite the presence of the marines, Harry wasn't really expecting trouble. Most likely, the Antarctic base had someone like Sam hanging around and poking their nose into places where it didn't quite belong. And really, Harry couldn't condemn that sort of behavior too harshly; he was guilty of it himself all the time.

As he and the marines rounded the final corner, Harry was unsurprised to see an unremarkable-looking man fiddling with a tablet computer and a tripod with a probing device of some sort on the top. The Canadian flag patch on the man's shoulder was less common than the American flag was, but still not surprising. What did surprise Harry was how cobbled-together the probing device looked. Had this man built his _own_ ward-breaker? Even Sam was just getting started with that.

By the time they reached the door to Harry's quarters, the fiddling man had clearly noticed Harry and the marines, and especially the guns in the Marines' hands. "I-I-I was just taking a l-look around, I swear!" the man stuttered, "I…please don't turn my uniform pink?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Not a fan of pink, I see? Well, I can accommodate that." And with a simple wave and flick of his hand, Harry conjured a dunce cap on the man's head. A further swirl assured that the cap wouldn't come off for a day, at least. "Unfortunately, my good man, I can't simply let people mess around with my things whenever they want. If you were just a little better at wardbreaking you would have tripped the active defenses, and then I would be the only person on the base who could revive you."

The man, who had been batting at the dunce cap in an attempt to remove it, quickly froze at Harry's words. "R-really?"

"Yes, really." Harry crossed his arms. "Now, I assume you know who I am. You appear to be quite a smart, well-informed individual, if a bit unwise. But I don't yet have the pleasure of knowing just who _you_ are."

The man glanced behind Harry at the marines, then took Harry's pointed observation for the veiled question that it was. "Uh-of course…I'm Rodney. McKay. Rodney McKay." Rodney McKay very awkwardly held his hand out to shake.

Deciding to cut the guy a break, Harry uncrossed his arms, walked over to the man, and shook his hand. "It's nice to meet you, Rodney McKay." Harry dropped the man's hand. "Now, would you care to explain why you thought breaking and entering made a fun pastime?"

Rodney McKay examined his shoes very carefully. "I…heard about what happened…at the SGC. I figured that…if I was careful…maybe I could do a bit of work without you noticing. Just enough to…well, anyway. I mean, what was the worst that could happen? People pick on me all the time, a pink uniform would have been nothing."

Harry tilted his head, considering that. "And is a dunce cap similarly 'nothing' to you?"

McKay's shoulders drooped. "Yea-well…no." The nervous man appeared to consider saying more before deciding better of it.

 _I see,_ Harry thought to himself. "Well then, there are no further problems here." He turned to the marines and said, "You can go. Tell Dr. Weir that it was a simple misunderstanding and that Rodney McKay has seen the error of his ways. He won't be messing with my things without permission again."

The marines clearly doubted Harry's words, but they turned to leave nonetheless. Soon, Only McKay, Harry, and McKay's tripod remained in the hallway outside of Harry's quarters.

"So," Harry said casually, "how does it work?"

McKay looked at him as though he'd grown a third head. "What?"

"Your little ward probe here, how does it work? I've seen my fair share of wardbreaking techniques, but I've never seen anything like your device here. Is it handmade?"

McKay's expression rapidly moved from shock to disbelief before settling on confused pride. "Well…it is handmade. I…I helped work out the circuitry the SGC uses to interface with the Stargate, and I based the design off of that. I heard a rumor that you think your magic and ancient technology are pretty much the same thing, and so I…went from there."

"Really…?" Harry asked. The possibilities were honestly intriguing. Harry himself had tried and failed many times to build a technological ward probe, or any mechanical device that used technology to interact with magic, and had always failed. But this man, hundreds of years his junior, had already succeeded at the same task.

Harry leaned forward eagerly. "Tell me more, and I'll grant you unlimited permission to mess with my wards, any time you want and for any reason you want."

"Any…reason?"

Harry nodded. "Including pranking."

If Harry hadn't been the son of a marauder, the grin that crossed Rodney McKay's face in that moment would have terrified him. Quite suddenly, Rodney seemed to shed his shyness and started eagerly telling Harry everything he knew about his efforts to interface with Alteran circuitry. Harry grinned to himself. Rodney might have been a little rough around the edges, but Harry suspected that the two men of science would get along quite well.

* * *

Several weeks later, Harry was working with Dr. Gall on the potentia socket when he heard Rodney's irritated voice from the hallway.

"Come on, Carson, just try it!"

A man with a thick Scottish accent replied, "Rodney, I've tried this already. I don't think it's a good idea."

Harry looked over at Dr. Gall, who had a knowing look on his face. "I've got this," the scientist said, "you go handle Rodney." Harry grinned. No seemed to understand how it had happened, but Harry had become the unofficial 'McKay deterrent' on the Antarctic base ever since Rodney had tried to break his wards. Harry suspected it had something to do with the fact that Rodney's dunce cap had lasted long enough for everyone to hear about it, and everyone on the base knew that Harry was responsible.

As Rodney and…Carson, apparently, entered the room, Harry stood up. "Rodney, you aren't badgering the ATA gene-holders again, are you?"

"Of course not!" Rodney said, at the same time as Carson said, "Yes. He is."

Harry quirked an eyebrow at Rodney. The man let out a defeated sigh. "All right, maybe a little bit, but come on Harry, they're the best tool we've got for interfacing with Alteran systems! Even your magic is a bit fiddly, but the ATA gene is what the Alteran systems are looking for!"

Harry let out a sigh of his own. Even though he could use his magic to interface with the Alteran systems in unprecedented ways, he apparently lacked the exact genetic key the systems looked for in an operator. "While that might be true, Rodney, you still shouldn't hassle the ATA gene-holders. It's not their fault they can operate the technology any more than it's your fault that you can't."

"Thank you!" Carson exclaimed suddenly, "that's what I've been trying to tell Rodney for the last 10 minutes. I'm a medical doctor, not an engineer!"

Harry shifted his attention to the Scotsman. "Carson, wasn't it?" Carson nodded. "Well Carson, you might not be an engineer, but try to look at it from an engineer's standpoint. We've got a machine here that only operates for certain, apparently randomly selected individuals, and you're one of those people. Now, you might feel a bit out of place here as a medical doctor, and even as a Scotsman, but don't worry about that. The whole point of this place is to bring various peoples closer together. All we want is a little help from you figuring out how the chair responds to proper users as opposed to my…magical tinkering."

Carson looked nervously at the control chair. "But…I'm not good with stuff like this. I _break_ things like this."

"This outpost has survived for millions of years," Rodney said in an exasperated tone, "it can definitely survive you."

Carson looked at Harry, then at the chair, then at Rodney. Then, coming to a decision, he moved to sit in the chair. As the Scotsman sat in the chair, however, nothing happened.

"Well that's odd," Harry said, "it activated right away for O'Neill."

"I told you I'm the wrong person for this," Carson said.

Harry chuckled. "Don't your genetics suggest otherwise, Carson?"

"Oh, don't remind me," Carson said, his Scottish accent thickening, "I'm the one who discovered the bloody gene."

Harry raised his eyebrows at that. "Really? That's a pretty impressive accomplishment. But I think you're getting distracted. With neural interfaces like this one, focus is important. Try to focus on…well, let's start with the chair for now."

Carson took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and shifted back in the chair. And then, quite suddenly, the blue lights came on in the chair and around the room. Dr. Gall started furiously tapping at his tablet, no doubt studying the active power draw from the potentia, and the other scientists around the room who had been watching the drama unfold suddenly turned to their instruments, taking notes on what was happening.

Then the drone one of the scientists had been studying suddenly activated and flew around the room. "Take cover!" Harry shouted, diving to the floor himself. He didn't bother casting a shield; he knew full well that an active drone would go through any shield he cast like a hot knife through butter. Before long the drone stopped flying around the room and went out the door, heading up the icy shaft to the outside world. Harry grimaced, getting to his feet slowly. This probably wouldn't end well.

…

 _"All inbound craft, we have a rogue drone that could seek a target on its own. Land immediately and shut down your engines; this is not a drill. I repeat-"_

"It's too late, hang on!" Major Sheppard interrupted, quickly shutting off the radio to avoid distractions. The…drone? It looked more like a missile, but it was closing on their position rapidly. Sheppard pulled the helicopter closer to the thing's flight path, knowing that his only change to dodge it would be at the very last second. Sure enough, a quick turn right before impact confused the thing's targeting and it flew right past the helicopter. Sheppard glanced down at the radar to see where this…drone was heading off to next, and nearly swore. It was coming back around for another pass. Must have been some kind of heat-seaker.

"Bank right!" General O'Neill said over the cockpit coms. Sheppard ignored him and banked sharply to the left instead, narrowly avoiding the heat-seaker for a second time. "I said right!" the General said, louder this time.

"Getting to that, sir," Sheppard said distractedly, banking sharply to the right this time. This thing was persistent, but at least he could out-fly it.

…

Harry snapped his wand out and cast a quick diagnostic charm on Carson. Sure enough, his mind was under just as much stress as O'Neill's had been, and he wasn't handling it well.

"I told you I wasn't the right person for this job," the poor man said, his Scottish accent thickening even further with the added stress.

Harry needed to calm him down, quickly, but he wasn't sure how the chair would react to a calming charm. He'd have to do this the old-fashioned way. "That's all right, Carson. Now I need you to listen to me, all right?" Carson nodded nervously. "Right, you're under considerable stress from the chair's systems right now, but I need you to relax. Take a deep breath, think soothing thoughts, and try to think peaceful thoughts." Carson squeezed his eyes shut, clearly focusing too hard to calm down. "Carson, relax. The system probably launched the drone in response to your distress. All you need to do to shut it down is to breathe, relax, and think peaceful thoughts." Theoretically, anyway. But the last thing Carson needed to hear while he was connected to a neural interface was uncertainty.

…

Just as Sheppard was pulling out of a dive he hoped would lead the damn thing chasing them into the ground, he saw the 'drone's' blip on the radar disappear. That had actually worked? Deciding not to question it, Sheppard quickly landed the helicopter. He didn't really need the General's order to shut it down. If the thing was a heat-seeker, that would be the only way to keep it off of them. Hopefully his last trick had finished it, but he wasn't willing to bet on it at this point. The thing had been too small to be any kind of drone he'd ever heard of, but not really agile enough to be a sophisticated tracking missile.

"Sir," Sheppard asked quietly, "what the hell was that?"

The general held up a quieting finger, but all he said was, "Wait for it."

Well that wasn't ominous at all. As the seconds stretched into a minute, however, Sheppard grew impatient. "What are we waiting for, sir?"

General O'Neill glanced at Sheppard. "That stunt of yours shouldn't have stopped it. They must have shut it down at the base."

Clearly, this was way over Sheppard's pay grade. Turning the radio back on, Sheppard said, "Antarctic Outpost, this is Hawk zero-three. The…drone appears to have been neutralized. General O'Neill and myself are unharmed. Do we have clearance to resume our previous flight path? Over."

After a brief pause, the response came. _"Hawk zero-three, this is Antarctic Outpost. We're glad to hear you're safe. You have clearance to proceed with your previous flight path. Over and out."_

"Hawk zero-three, acknowledged. Over and out."

As he started the helicopter back up, Sheppard could help but comment, "That was different."

General O'Neill, however, was nonplussed. "For me," he said, "not so much."

…

Harry beamed at Carson. "See, you didn't break it."

The Scotsman stood up hastily, the chair falling dark behind him. "Don't say that, you'll jinx it! I already set off a bloody missile; I don't want to think about what else I could do."

"Don't worry, Dr. Beckett," a soothing voice said from behind Harry. Turning, the wizard saw Dr. Weir standing in the doorway. How long she'd been there, Harry couldn't tell. "Lieutenant Ford tells me that no one was hurt. The drone apparently went after an approaching craft, but the pilot was able to land safely, and they're back in the air now."

Carson looked incredibly glad to hear that. "Well that's a relief. All I felt was this sort of…power, like I've never felt before. And it was like a light, dancing across the sky…if this fellow here," he pointed at Harry, "hadn't calmed me down I'm not sure how I would have stopped it."

Harry smiled. "Just doing my best to help out, mate."

"Your efforts are appreciated as always, Harry," Dr. Weir said. "I don't care what the military brass says; it's good to have you here when things like this happen. I don't know that anyone else on the planet is more qualified to handle this than you."

"Please, Doctor, you're making me blush. I'm just doing my part to get the Atlantis Expedition on its feet."

"Yeah," Rodney added, "you can't wait to get your hands on all that ancient Atlantean technology."

"Yes, well," Harry said, "you're…not wrong about that."

"Whatever your reasons were, Harry," Carson interjected, "thank you _so_ much for helping me shut down that drone. I don't what I'd do with myself if I'd gotten someone hurt."

"Well, don't worry about it," Harry said, clapping Carson on the shoulder, "you _didn't_ hurt anyone, and that's what matters. I doubt the drone you activated was even operating at peak efficiency. It was probably just following automated defense protocols based on your stress. All you needed to do was keep a cool head."

Carson stared at the command chair doubtfully. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'll just avoid sitting in that chair in the future. I hope you got your readings, because I don't really want to mess with that thing until we're sure I can't hurt anyone with it."

 _Well,_ Harry supposed, _that's fair enough. He is a medical doctor, after all._

…

Sheppard looked around the tiny outpost, trying to process what General O'Neill had just told him. An ancient, alien drone weapon was in Antarctica, apparently having been left there long before the ice sheets had formed. And this outpost was part of an _international_ effort to study the weapon after it had been used in a battle that had decided the fate of the entire planet only a few months ago. This was _definitely_ above his pay grade. Why the hell had the general told him any of this at all?

"Rodney, after what just happened, I think we should tone back the tests on the chair for today," someone said, distracting Sheppard from his thoughts. Following the voice, Sheppard saw two men standing next to a weird-looking chair, surrounded by weird-looking technology and several scientists who were pointedly keeping busy. One of the men was wearing a long, black robe, and the other was in a more traditional parka.

"Just because one candidate couldn't control the chair properly, that doesn't mean we should stop testing all the candidates," the man in the parka argued.

Sheppard had heard enough. "You were the ones!"

The men turned to him, surprised. "Well," the man in the robe said, "I don't know who you are, but Rodney is probably the one you should be mad at." He gestured helpfully to the man in the parka.

"Harry!" Rodney objected, "I am not the problem here! I—"

"Rodney." Harry interrupted, "Stop. You were the one who hassled Carson until he sat in the chair; you share some of the blame for what happened after he sat in the chair. So do I, for that matter." The robed man then turned to Sheppard. "Speaking of responsibility, what were you about to blame Rodney for?"

Sheppard glanced at the chair they were arguing about. Did this thing have control over the drone that had nearly shot his helicopter down? "It sounds like you two were _both_ responsible for nearly getting me shot out of the sky while I was flying in General O'Neill!"

Both men paled slightly. "Wait," Harry said, "that was your helicopter? And you were carrying General O'Neill?"

"Yes."

"Oh, we are so screwed," Rodney whined.

Harry rolled his eyes. "It's not that bad, Rodney, no one got hurt. At worst, O'Neill will be a little touchy when he finds out." Pausing, the robed man looked Sheppard directly in the eyes. "I am sorry you were nearly shot down, by the way. This stuff is so far beyond us that it almost seems to have a mind of its own. Hell, knowing the Alterans I suspect they had probably cracked artificial intelligence long before you were even mastering fire. Anyway, if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, just let me know."

"Sure," Sheppard said, "…but what's an Alteran?"

* * *

 _Several Months Later_

Major Sheppard looked up at the Stargate, still not sure he believed what was happening. If he hadn't seen legitimate, highly-classified documentation about basic Stargate operations, he would probably have been half-convinced that Harry was playing some kind of highly elaborate prank on him. But no, it seemed that not only were several major world leaders in on the secrets of the Stargate, he was about to be one of the first people to go to a whole 'nother _galaxy,_ too.

And the Colonel in charge of the security detail didn't like him, just as an added bonus.

Suddenly, the Stargate began to spin.

Then, an alarm began to sound. "Unscheduled offworld activation!" someone shouted over the P.A. system. That didn't sound good.

"Everyone, clear the debarkation area, we have an unscheduled wormhole incoming, along with potential hostiles." General O'Neill said over the loudspeaker. Suddenly, the crowded gate room turned into ordered chaos as everyone rushed to get out of the way.

"Marines, take defensive positions around the gate!" Colonel Sumner shouted, and Sheppard moved to join them. He wasn't a marine, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to get out of the room in time for it to matter. "Safeties off, men," Sumner ordered, "we are the first line of defense of the planet right now, no matter what you were five minutes ago."

But, you know, no pressure or anything, Sheppard thought as he flicked off his safety. Several concentric slats of metal slid into the Stargate's aperture, completely blocking it. The iris, Sheppard remembered that was called. Theoretically they meant that nothing could get through an incoming Stargate without approval. Light flared against the wall behind the Stargate, and there was a great _woosh_ as the wormhole activated. Sheppard felt a bead of sweat run down his face.

Nothing happened for several, long minutes. Sheppard knew the marines around him were just as restless as he was, but he hadn't heard anything hit the iris. What the hell was going on?

"Marines, stand ready, but hold your fire. We're opening the iris; it appears that a friendly wants to come through," General O'Neill's voice came over the loudspeaker again.

Sure enough, the iris opened, revealing the rippling blue wormhole behind it. Shepparad glanced around. At least the civilians had all left the room, and the doors were safely closed.

And then, with barely a ripple from the gate, a large, silver craft flew into the gate room, stopping just short of hitting the far wall. And then it…hung there, hovering on thin air. Almost as an afterthought, the Stargate closed behind it. Sheppard glanced up at the control room. What the hell was going on?

* * *

 **A/N: Any guesses? 7 internet cookies to anyone who gets the right answer in a review!**

 **So, it hasn't been quite as long a wait this time. Unfortunately, I'm afraid to report that this time gap is likely going to be much more normal, with the possibility that chapters will come out faster on special occasions. Real life has just been one huge hassle lately, and while I've wrestled it into a manageable position I doubt it's going to get easier any time soon. You all are wonderful readers though, so you have my solemn oath that I'll make efforts to keep a more regular schedule. When I can. XD**

 **And before you tell me that Harry should totally have the ATA gene for whatever arbitrary reason, keep in mind that Harry's from a completely different universe. There's no reason for him to have the exact gene that the ancient Alterans and Lanteans used to gene-lock their technology. Just the fact that his magic resembles Alteran circuitry is a pretty big coincidence. Having the perfect genes to operate it would be a bit much, in my opinion.**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**

 **P.S. I fixed the bit where Hammond was still at the SGC despite getting reassigned during the drama surrounding the battle with Anubis. I can't believe no one noticed that.**


	10. Minor Setbacks

**A/N: Guestinator, we meet again. You still haven't created a proper account, so I still can't reply to you directly, but to you and anyone who shares your worries about Rodney "outdoing" magic, I say this: Rodney isn't outdoing magic. He's not even probing Harry's wards very well. But just the fact that Rodney has created a device that has any hope of parsing out a magical system is groundbreaking to Harry, a wizard who's spent his whole life thinking that technology just can't do that. And Rodney, of course, is just going off of his experience in interpreting (and misinterpreting) the signals the gate sends to Earth's custom-built Dialing Computer. Magic isn't getting out-done here. That's why Rodney was still wearing a dunce cap two days later.**

 **Anyway, back to the story. I think there was a hullabaloo about a ship coming through the Stargate or something…**

* * *

Harry looked out at the crowded gate room. He could almost feel the tension in the air. Months of effort, by all of these people, had led to this momentous day. With a lot of very careful and delicate work (and no small amount of help from Sam) Harry had managed to synthesize five potentia. They'd used several high-quality materials the SG teams had tracked down across a dozen worlds in the process. And today, they were gathered to witness and take part in the fruit of those labors. One of those potentia would be used to power the intergalactic wormhole to _Atlantis._ The city of the Ancients, the Jewel of the Alteran people. Harry was still having a hard time believing he'd actually found an alternate reality where the story wasn't just a tall tale told by a bunch of drunk muggles who might or might not have been hoodwinked by mischievous mages.

The gate began to spin. Harry's heart sped up. Technicians immediately started hammering at keyboards, and then an alarm began to sound. "Unsheduled offworld activation," one of them said into a microphone, and Harry heard his voice over the P.A. system. That didn't sound good.

Harry turned to General O'Neill, who was standing with him, Dr. Weir and Daniel Jackson while Rodney hooked up the potentia. "That's not supposed to happen, is it?" Harry asked.

Dr. Weir and General O'Neill looked quite grave. "That's what the iris is for," O'Neill said, nodding at one of the technicians, who scanned his hand on a device next to his computer, causing the Stargate's heavily reinforced iris to close. O'Neill then gave an order to evacuate the gate room as the ever-present marines in the gate room readied their weapons, alongside the marines from the Atlantis Expedition who were currently in the debarkation area.

Harry was suddenly struck with curiosity. "How does the iris actually work? Sam told me it's an incredibly strong alloy, but surely that doesn't stop everything that comes through the gate."

"It prevents anything from rematerializing on this side of the wormhole," Rodney said behind them, "It's not a matter of physical force, the metal is so close to the event horizon that anything attempting to materialize is instantly atomized."

"Really?" Harry turned to face Rodney, "what about subatomic particles?" O'Neill groaned beside him.

"Actually," Rodney said, "The Goa'uld Sokar once used a subatomic particle beam weapon in an attempt to overheat and melt the iris. The subatomic particles rematerialized just fine."

Well that was interesting. You could stop most wormhole travel with a great big chunk of metal. Harry made a mental note to investigate that further in the future. As the gate finished dialing, Harry observed the iris with interest. Then, Inter interrupted his thoughts.

 _Harry, I'm getting a coded message from…us. It's a third-year situation, but without any causal loops._

 _Oh bugger,_ Harry thought. _I hate time travel. Everything always gets so much more complicated when time travel is involved. "Ahem._ O'Neill, I think I know who's on the other side of the Stargate."

The general raised an eyebrow at him. "How?"

"I can use my mental interface as a short-ranged communicator in a pinch. I just got a message from…well, you're not going to believe this."

"Try me."

"It's me, but from a couple hours in the future. If I had to guess, something on Atlantis _really_ doesn't go well, because I hate time travel, and I wouldn't bother with it unless I had a very good reason."

"Hang on," Daniel asked, "You're saying you went back in time?"

"Yes," Harry said, "I've done it before. Technically, the wizard on the other side of the gate isn't even a future version of me; it's me from an alternate future. But whatever alternate future he came from, this is almost definitely the point of divergence from the original timeline. It can't be a coincidence that we were just about to go to another galaxy and attempt to sort through the possible ruins of an ancient civilization at the exact moment that this...me arrived."

"Can you be sure it's really you?" O'Neill asked.

"I have ways of coding my messages. Among other things, the message itself references the first bootstrap paradox I was a part of, so that I know roughly what I'm dealing with. It's my standard warning that I'm about to be neck-deep in time travel."

"Wait," Rodney said, "you actually created a bootstrap paradox? How did you get everything right the second time through?"

"Bootstrap paradoxes have actually proven to be stable," Sam spoke up, "SG-1 participated in one a few years ago."

Harry raised an eyebrow at that, and McKay was clearly quite surprised, but the wizard decided to pre-empt any further discussion. "It seems like time travel isn't quite as unfamiliar to you as I would have thought. But in any case, may I invite this future me through? I can vouch for him, he'll cause no harm."

O'Neill stared at Harry thoughtfully for nearly a minute. Then, clearly coming to a decision, he picked up the P.A. microphone and addressed the gate room. "Marines, stand ready, but hold your fire. We're opening the iris; it appears that a friendly wants to come through." Then he turned to Harry. "If this goes south, it's on you and you'd better help us deal with it," the general stated simply.

Harry nodded. That was fair. The technician scanned his hand again, and the iris opened. Harry sent a "clear to proceed" message through Inter.

And then, quite suddenly, the wormhole spat out a large, silver craft. It barely looked small enough to fit through the gate, and it was shaped cylindrically, as though it was designed to be as big as was practical while still fitting through a Stargate. More than that, Harry could actually feel the neural link the ship had with his future self. It was almost alive, and as it hung motionless in the air, Harry couldn't help but be impressed.

"Now that," Harry said aloud, "has some serious potential."

…

John Sheppard lowered his gun a fraction, awed at the ease with which the silver craft defied gravity. Then, without any outward indication of thrust, the craft began to rotate, a rear door sliding open. And without even letting his craft touch the ground, the pilot jumped out, gliding gently down the two meter drop to the ground as though gravity was more of a guideline than an actual rule. But even weirder, Sheppard recognized the pilot.

"Harry?"

The wizard's gaze turned to John, and in those eyes Sheppard saw the trauma that only recent, fresh death could cause.

"Harry, what happened? I thought you were still on Earth."

The wizard sighed. "I am, Sheppard. And I would have stayed here for approximately another 23 minutes before departing to the lost city of Atlantis. After arriving, the city's shields fell, and everyone drowned. I…tried to save them. But I was too late, and the potentia sockets were too far from the gate."

The door to the debarkation room opened, and revealed…Harry? What the hell was going on here?

"How bad was it?" The newly arrived Harry asked the one from the ship.

"Horrible," the one from the jumper answered. "We were all on Atlantis before we realized the power was failing, and the city is underwater. The city is on its last legs, and unless it gets fresh potentia as soon as you arrive, your own explorations will cause the lights to come on and drain what little power the city was using to power its shields." The wizard gestured to his ship, "This gate-ship was modified by one of the Atlantean scientists to travel through time. After…after everyone drowned, I found this ship's hanger, and there's an automatic system that can dial the gate inside the ship. So…I used the ship to travel back in time with the potentia we'd brought over, pulled out one of the city's nearly depleted potentia, and replaced it with our full one. Then I just flew this gate-ship through to Earth. Thanks for letting me through, by the way."

"Hang on," Colonel Sumner interrupted, "are you saying you're from the future?"

"He's telling the truth," said the Harry who hadn't come from the gate-ship. "How else do you explain both of us standing in the same room?"

"Can you guide a team with full potentias through Atlantis in time to prevent…what happened to you?" General O'Neill asked. Sheppard hadn't even noticed him enter the room.

Gate-ship Harry shook his head. "No. I'm not sticking around in this timeline." He stared deeply into the other Harry's eyes for a second, and then gestured to his ship. The ship floated down and hovered just over his head. "I've given your timeline's Harry what he needs to know. Once he's on Atlantis, he can apparate straight to the room where the potentia are and replace them. I only came back to warn you. The rest will be up to you. This isn't my timeline, and I've already failed to solve this problem."

"Now hang on a minute-" Sumner tried to say, but Gate-ship Harry ignored him and twirled in a circle, his hands outstretched. Strange shapes drew themselves in the air in a sphere around the wizard and his ship.

"Everyone, stand back!" the Harry outside the bubble ordered. "He's about to jump to another universe!"

"Can you stop him?" General O'Neill asked.

The strange symbols began to move around, and new symbols were added as the Harry inside the bubble waved his hands around in an increasingly chaotic, and yet somehow orderly manner. A loud hum began to vibrate the floor, setting John's teeth on edge.

"Probably not!" Harry shouted over the hum, "At least not without causing a massive magical surge! That kind of magic might blow up in our faces, or it might turn us all into daisies!"

General O'Neill muttered something to himself, then shouted, "Withdraw to the hallway and close the blast doors!"

Harry, however, stayed behind. "That shouldn't be necessary!" he shouted over the growing hum, "I'll stay here and make sure the ritual doesn't get out of hand."

John silently wished him luck as he followed the marines out of the gate room. General O'Neill closed the door behind him, and the hum quieted to more acceptable levels.

"Sir," John asked, "What in the hell was that?"

General O'Neill gave him a long look. "That, Major, is an excellent question."

The humming grew progressively louder, even through the door, and John started to hear a rushing sound, like wind. Then, quite suddenly, the noise stopped. A crack like gunfire sounded in the hallway, and John turned reflexively turned, aiming his gun at the sound, but saw that it was just Harry.

"The danger has passed," the wizard said. "That ritual isn't really dangerous anymore; I've honed it to simplicity over the course of my life." Harry glanced at the marines and John, who still had their guns trained on him. "And I'm sorry about the apparition. I know it can be a bit startling the first time you see it."

"You can say that again," the General O'Neill said.

Dr. Weir stepped out of the control room. "Harry? What just happened?"

The wizard glanced around at the marines, and the hallway they were standing in. "Quite a bit, actually," he said, "Let's continue this in the briefing room."

…

Harry looked at the people gathered in the briefing room. Dr. Weir was there, obviously, as was General O'Neill. Colonel Sumner, who would be the commanding officer of the military forces in Atlantis, was also present. But more interesting to Harry was the fact that Dr. Jackson and Sam were also there. Apparently these two were so well-respected that they got to weigh in on mission briefings that didn't directly concern them.

"Well," Harry said, gathering his thoughts, "we're here to talk about what just happened. And from what I can discern from the memories that my future self shared, we might not have a lot of time to discuss it. But, to summarize as briefly as possible, in the alternate timeline my future self came from, we sent an expedition to Atlantis. The MALP read breathable atmosphere, and showed a solid structure with no hint of the ruins we theorized might be all that was left. So we all went through the gate, and started to explore the city that we've been dreaming of visiting for months now." Harry paused; struggling through the memory of what had come next.

"Then," he continued, "Rodney noticed that the city's power was failing, and that Atlantis was underwater. Apparently the stories about Atlantis sinking beneath the waves are true, after a fashion. And for 10 million years, the city shield preserved the city, keeping the water out. But the potentia that power the city were just about ready to fail, and by exploring the city and activating various systems that had been shut down automatically to conserve power, we doomed both the city and ourselves." Harry paused, mentally separating himself from the experience. "Or rather, they doomed themselves. Sorry, it's a bit disorienting sorting through someone else's memories."

"Why didn't you…he…why didn't they use the potentia you took with you?" Sam asked.

Harry smiled wryly. "We tried. Unfortunately, the city's blueprints aren't in the Database I recovered from O'Neill's head, and by the time they'd realized the shield was failing, the water had practically flooded the whole city. They tried to spread out and find the room where the city's potentia were stored, but that just meant that they all drowned separately. I…or rather, my counterpart…he tried to save them once he realized what was going on, but he didn't get back in time. He only survived because it's actually pretty trivial to cast a spell that provides limitless oxygen underwater. But the rest of the expedition…they didn't make it."

A somber silence fell across the room. Harry tried not to remember his counterpart swimming past the corpses of Dr. Weir and Colonel Sumner, among many others, but the memories were still quite fresh, even though they weren't technically his.

Eventually, Dr. Weir broke the silence. "Do you think we can stop that from happening again?"

"Yes," Harry replied, "my counterpart explored the city quite thoroughly after…after it flooded. Everything was dead, and none of the doors opened easily, but he was determined to find…well, anything that would make it all worth it. He had hoped to find a way to finally get back to my original universe, if we explored a city built by the Alteran people. In his explorations, he did eventually find the room where the potentia were stored, as well as a hanger with several of the gate-ships like the one he flew here. And, rather curiously, one of those ships had a built-in time machine. So he decided that, even if _his_ expedition had failed, he'd do his part to help us out. It's not much, in the vastness of the multiverse, but I definitely appreciate the gesture."

"Yes," agreed Dr. Weir, "I think we all do. To think that we nearly died…"

"But that won't happen again, will it?" O'Neill asked, fixing Harry with a pointed stare.

"No," Harry said, "it won't. If I go through the gate first, I can apparate three potentia directly to the room where the city's potentia are kept, and replace the drained potentia with fresh ones. The only reason my counterpart couldn't was because I can only apparate to places I've either been to, or can clearly picture in my head."

O'Neill frowned. "Why three? Isn't one powerful enough to power…I don't know, at least a whole country?"

Harry smiled. O'Neill's lack of technical expertise aside, he had a good point. "A single potentia would probably be able to power every single country on Earth, actually, and for several years without stopping. But what you're forgetting is just how advanced the Alterans were. Their city's shield held the crushing pressure of several hundred _meters_ of water off of an area that's nearly 20 kilometers in diameter. The power involved in maintaining such a shield…well, it would dwarf the Earth's yearly power consumption by quite a bit. So yes, it's best to use three potentia, rather than just one. We might _technically_ be able to use one safely, but I'd rather not risk it, all things considered."

O'Neill still looked reluctant. "We only have five of these things, total. Are you sure it's worth using three of them to power this city?"

"Jack!" Dr. Jackson exclaimed, "This is _Atlantis!_ The city of the Ancients that we've been looking for all this time! You can't be saying that we shouldn't go! _"_

Harry raised an eyebrow. O'Neill let Dr. Jackson call him _Jack?_ Harry hadn't been under the impression that the General let himself get that close to anyone, let alone an archeologist.

"Daniel," O'Neill said patiently, as though they'd had this argument before, " _you_ aren't going regardless. I need you here. And all I'm saying is that it seems a little…excessive. These potentia things are incredibly powerful, and Harry's asking us for three of them!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Oh, please, General O'Neill. You can't still be concerned that I'm trying to steal Earth's potentia, can you? I helped you _make_ those potentia. If I'd wanted to steal one, I'd already be long gone." Harry noticed Dr. Weir's expression go a bit flat, as though she was hiding her reaction to his words.

"I'm not saying that…" O'Neill said. "I'm just saying…what was I saying?" he turned to Sam.

"You were saying that three potentia is a bit much, sir." Sam dutifully reported, unfazed by O'Neill's apparent absent-mindedness. "But it might not be. It takes at least five of our most powerful power generators just provide minimal to power a small Alteran outpost, or _one_ potentia for full power. Three potentia might just be what it takes to power a whole Alteran city."

O'Neill considered that. "Oh," he said, "well, in that case, I guess you should take three of them. You wouldn't want the city shields failing again."

Harry blinked. It was that simple? In order to change O'Neill's mind you just had to…convince Sam and Dr. Jackson? He'd have to keep that in mind. "I'll go get the potentia, then. Unless anyone else had questions?" He glanced over at Colonel Sumner, who had remained quiet through the briefing, but the man didn't seem to have anything to say. "Right, then. Rodney should be done hooking the Stargate up to a potentia by now, and as we've discovered, the clock is ticking. With your permission, General, may I use the gate to go to Atlantis as soon as I collect the potentia?"

"Yes," O'Neill said, "by all means. And hurry up about it too! We wouldn't want you to end up going for another swim, would we?"

Harry smirked at O'Neill's terrible humor, but just nodded in acknowledgement before apparating directly to his laboratory in Antarctica, where three of the potentia he'd helped make were being stored. There were few places more secure than the seventh continent, after all, if only because it was so hard to get to. Well, hard to get to unless you were an immortal wizard who'd spend centuries learning how to apparate across entire planets. Then it wasn't quite so secure.

Gathering the three potentia into his expanded sleeve, the wizard took one last look at his lab. He probably wouldn't be seeing it again, now that he was going off to Atlantis.

"Farewell, then," he said aloud.

Turning on his heel, Harry apparated once more, this time to the SGC gate control room. The reaction to his arrival was…amusing, as the technician in charge of watching the Stargate and all its monitoring systems spilled coffee all over himself in shock.

"What the hell!" the man exclaimed, "Where'd you come from? I thought you were in the briefing room?"

"Sorry about that," Harry said, cleaning the man's uniform with a wave of his hand, "the meeting is over, and it's been decided that I need to get to Atlantis as soon as possible."

"What? Why?" asked a familiar voice behind Harry. The wizard turned to see Rodney standing next to a glowing potentia.

"Oh, good," Harry said, "you got that all hooked up. And I guess you didn't hear, but the reason a version of me from the future came through the Stargate was to warn us that our expedition was doomed unless I get fresh potentia to the city as soon as possible. The city's power has lasted 10 million years, which is pretty impressive, but it's about to fail, and it's also under several hundred meters of ocean with nothing but an energy shield holding back the water."

"Oh." Rodney said. "Well…good luck then."

Harry smiled. "You aren't going to offer to help me with this one?"

"You don't need my help, you can teleport and shoot lasers out of your hands!"

"Those aren't lasers, Rodney, they're stinging jinxes."

"They're bright emissions that cause pain on impact! That's close enough to a laser for me!"

Harry smirked. "Well, this has been a great chat, as usual, Rodney. But I really do need to hurry. Is the potentia fully connected?"

Rodney glanced back at the glowing crystalline structure, held aloft by several wires and bits of metal. "It should be. I guess we won't know until we dial the gate."

Harry nodded. "That's good enough for me." He turned to the technician. "Siler, wasn't it? Dial us up." The technician started, probably surprised that Harry remembered his name. The two had only worked together briefly on creating the potentia, after all, but Harry sort of cheated when it came to remembering things.

"A-All right, Mr. Potter," the technician stuttered.

Harry smiled casually at the man. "Please, just call me Harry. Hearing someone call me Mr. Potter just makes me feel like I'm back in school."

"Er…right," Siler said, sitting at his station and scanning his palm. Then, after a few key-presses on the keyboard, the Stargate began to spin, the chevrons lighting up one by one.

"Well," Harry said, "Don't wait up for me. I'll be in touch, whether I get the city back online or not. Now that I know to expect a flood, I definitely won't be caught off guard."

As Harry stepped into the gate room, the eighth chevron locked into place, and the massive vortex of energy erupted forth, only to collapse back into a stable, intergalactic wormhole.

Harry idly wondered whether an intergalactic wormhole would be more or less pleasant than an intragalactic wormhole. _Only one way to find out._ He stepped through the event horizon, and instantly felt himself being compressed into information, just as he had been before. Remarkably, the journey felt no longer than an intragalactic trip, but his thoughts were interrupted as he was spat out into a dark, open room. Without hesitating, he pictured the potentia room and turned on his heel. In his counterpart's memories, just walking around the room had turned on lights, and it had been less than 5 minutes before flooding reached the highest levels of the city.

Upon his arrival, the lights in the potentia room came on, allowing him a good look at what it was supposed to look like, without a watery sheen refracting his wandlight. The architecture was…unique. Incredibly angular, with flares and grooves everywhere. It was blocky, but with enough slants that it didn't grate on the eyes like a purely utilitarian design would. But he would have time to admire the structure of the city later. Summoning the potentia out of his sleeve, he set them on the floor and laid a hand on the pedestal which held three glowing potentia, feeding it enough power to communicate with it.

 _ **Emergency**_ _: power failure imminent,_ the system warned him, _Evacuate immediately or user will perish._

 _I have three potentia, and intend to avert the power failure,_ he told the system, _please eject the current potentia one at a time._

He felt the system pause in disbelief, and run some sort of scan over him, then the room. _Potentia: confirmed. Ejecting spent cells._ One of the potentia went dark, then raised out of the pedestal. Harry quickly replaced it. The process then repeated itself two more times, and he laid his hand on the pedestal again, reaching out to the system.

 _Is that better?_ He asked it.

 _Full power restored. Reactivating life support and nonessential systems,_ it replied, before the tone…changed. _Maintain current location_ _._ A blue shimmer ran down the walls of the room, and Harry started to feel like he was being corralled.

 _What? Why?_ Harry asked, confused.

"Because I have a questions for you, traveler," a female voice said behind him. Turning, he saw a woman in white robes standing in the doorway. A faint, golden glow radiated off of her, though her features were fairly standard human fare, with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. The door behind her was now shut, even though Harry was pretty sure it had been open when he'd arrived.

"Right," Harry said. "And I assume you don't want me to leave until I give you satisfactory answers, do you?"

The woman tilted her chin in acknowledgement. "How did you discover the location of this city, traveler?"

"Well, first, my name is Harry. And the stellar coordinates for this city's address in your wormhole system were stored in an old Alteran database in…what people of Earth call the Milky Way galaxy."

"You are from Earth?" The woman asked doubtfully.

Harry shrugged. "Technically. What do you know about Earth?"

"You are not of Earth," the woman stated confidently, "the people of that planet have not had sufficient time to evolve to your current form. And you lack certain…traits which make your presence in this city quite alarming, to say nothing of your abilities."

Harry smirked. "Yeah, I get that a lot. I'm a bit of an anomaly, and I'm not exactly from around here, if you catch my drift."

The woman pressed on, unphased. "You have stated that you are 'technically' from Earth, so I would not assume that you are from 'around here.' Explain yourself."

Harry sighed. It looked like this one lacked a sense of humor. "I'm from Earth, but not the Earth you're thinking of. I'm originally from an alternate universe where life on Earth developed…differently. My people developed a gift we called magic at the dawn of civilization, and remained a statistical minority of the population for all of the 6,000 years of recorded history. My magic works...similarly to the circuitry in your more complicated technology, and I suspect that has to do with similar laws of reality between our two universes, though your peoples' methods of harnessing magic appears to differ somewhat from mine."

The woman tilted her head in consideration, and Harry could practically feel her sizing him up. "That would explain a great deal. Your mind does not even properly feel Alteran, yet you possess the gifts of the Alteran people."

"My mind?" Harry asked. "How would you know what my…oh. You're the city's artificial intelligence, aren't you?"

The woman nodded. "I am called Lantis. What is your purpose here, Traveler Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "Exploration, tinkering, maybe figuring out how your advanced wormhole targeting works in greater detail. And I suppose I'm also here to make sure that the Atlantis Expedition doesn't end in utter disaster."

Lantis arched an eyebrow. "The 'Atlantis' Expedition? Explain."

"Well, it's complicated," Harry said, considering just how much he should tell the artificial intelligence that currently had him locked in a small room for interrogation. He decided to go with the simple version. "You see, I'm not from this reality, but I'm working with an organization that is. They've been seeking this city for some time for their own purposes, and when I found that out I decided to join their little 'Atlantis Expedition' at the soonest possible opportunity."

"And what exactly does this organization intend to do once they arrive?" Lantis asked pointedly.

Harry grinned sheepishly. "Well…look, you have to understand something. These people, they're quite primitive by your standards, at least technologically speaking. They only discovered hyperspace a few years ago, and they didn't even properly figure out how to work an Astria Porta much more than a few years before that. Not only that, but they're currently embroiled in an ongoing conflict with a race of parasites that can remove their species' free will by crawling up inside their heads, and that species, the Goa'uld, seem to be getting help from someone with connections to the Alterans of old. So…while a vast majority of the expedition is civilian scientists and researchers, they're also hoping to find ways to improve their position in the conflict with the Goa'uld."

Lantis frowned. "They seek the secrets of this city in order to wage war? I may be a mere custodian, but I will not allow such a thing!"

Harry sighed internally, but didn't let his frustration show. He'd been expecting something like this, if he encountered any Alteran remnants. "Look, give them a break. They may be looking for ways to help them win a war, but that's not their only purpose. It is a purpose most dear to their hearts, but a mere hundred planetary rotations ago they fought off a warlord bent on wiping all life off of their planet using overwhelming force they couldn't have hoped to match. If they hadn't discovered the Alteran outpost frozen in their southern ice cap and used its drones to defend themselves, their entire people would now be nothing more than a memory. Martyrs, perhaps, whose names would be shouted from the lips of resistance fighters all across the galaxy, but a memory nonetheless. They don't have any real off-world colonies, and their only means of evacuation is an Astria Porta, so they could only evacuate at most several hundred out of their population of nearly seven _billion_ souls. They aren't some petty, warmongering primitives. They're actually quite a sophisticated civilization, once you take the time to get to know them, with a rich and varied culture. One which, as it happens, is well-represented by the Atlantis Expedition. There aren't representatives from every nation, or even from most nations among their number, but the expedition isn't really big enough for that to be feasible."

Lantis narrowed her eyes, and Harry felt as though she was trying to scan his very soul. Realizing that she very well might be doing something of the sort, he eased up on his occlumency and allowed the truth of his words to come to the forefront of his mind.

"These…people," she said eventually, "I will allow them into the great City of Atlantis. But I am doing so on your word alone, and you can be sure that I will be monitoring the situation closely that your words are true. Much harm can come to careless explorers in this city, and I will not have primitive tinkering bring down the vaunted reputation of those who created me."

Harry smiled. "Thank you, Lantis. These people may seem primitive and blundering to you, but they have great potential. If they didn't, they would have perished many times by now."

"Words are cheap, Traveler Harry. If you truly mean what you say, bring these people here and show me the truth of your words."

Harry smirked. "Reading my mind wasn't enough for you?"

"It was not," Lantis stated. "You clearly believe what you say, and you do not seem to be a fool, but the last time residents of this city attempted to elevate a lower species, they created an enemy so powerful and virulent that they were forced from this galaxy altogether, their only option to flee back to a plague-infested Earth where those who did not ascend beyond this plane died a slow and painful death."

Harry blinked. That was quite a bit to take in, but he decided he'd question the AI later. "I suppose I can't offer absolute certainty that such things won't happen again, but I seriously doubt that the people in charge of this expedition would allow themselves or those subordinate to them to become what you fear so much.

"Now, if I might take my leave, I need to take the news back to Earth that this city is safe to explore, and that this timeline won't see them all killed in a catastrophic flood." Harry took no small amount of pleasure from the shocked look on Lantis's face as he apparated up to the control room where the Stargate was located and quickly dialed Earth's address, as well as the relevant point of origin and extragalactic marker symbols. Pausing briefly to admire just how quickly this Stargate could dial an address compared to the one on Earth, he quickly conjured a patronus to let the SGC know to open the iris before hurrying through the event horizon. Lantis shouted something at him as he stepped through the wormhole, but he didn't stop to find out what it was.

He didn't doubt that he would pay dearly for his moment of fun when he returned, but really now. If the AI was going to make dramatic proclamations doom, he felt compelled to respond in kind.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, there's another chapter, done and done. I really am sorry that these are taking so long now, but life is being a bit draining at the moment, and getting the creative juices to flow feels a bit like trying to wring milk from a rock most of the time. I hope you all enjoyed the chapter despite the wait!**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	11. Settling in

**A/N: Well, plenty of people noticed Harry's ineptitude when it comes to history lessons in the last chapter, but no one seems to have remembered that Earth's Stargate has an iris, myself included. So Harry sort of committed suicide at the end of the last chapter, at least in the initial upload. I've fixed** _ **that**_ **issue (Harry now sent a patronus through the gate before him, if you don't feel like opening the previous chapter to check) but as for the timeline mishap…well, I've decided that it's plausible that Harry would have simply gotten the dates wrong. He's not a history buff, after all, and I'm just going to assume that Harry made the same mistake I did; he listened to Daniel's theory that Atlantis left the Milky Way "somewhere between 5 and 10 million years ago," and then decided that Atlantis has been submerged and abandoned for that whole time without putting any more thought into it. Harry at least has the excuse that he was busy synthesizing potentia, I was just an inattentive author who didn't bother to check the timeline.**

 **And for those of you sharp-eyed readers who noticed that Daniel was present for one of the occasions where Harry claimed that Altantis's shield had been holding for 10 million years (something else I overlooked for far longer than I should have) I will point out that right now no one in the story actually knows when Atlantis submerged itself, or exactly why, only that it was submerged long enough ago that it was almost out of power. So the story I'm going with is that Daniel assumed that Harry knew what he was talking about, and let the point pass since it wasn't really important to that conversation anyway. It even makes sense! Rest assured though, I'm not changing canon. Harry will have figured out his mistake off-screen, and will be using the correct numbers in this chapter.**

 **And now, back to your (ir)regularly scheduled reading.**

* * *

Harry stepped out of the Earth Stargate, still grinning to himself over his little bit of mischief. Harry gave a casual wave to the twitchy marines who were nervously pointing their weapons at him and nodded to Sheppard, who stood out in his darker Air Force uniform.

Then, still feeling mischievous, he apparated into the briefing room, consciously dampening the crack upon arrival. To his dismay, however, the room was empty. Harry ran a quick legilimentic scan of the base and found that most of the people he was looking for were in the control room now, and more than a little irritated with him. With hardly a thought, he apparated into their midst.

"Sorry about that," he said, ignoring the many startled reactions to his sudden appearance, "I was trying to surprise you all, but I seem to have landed in the wrong room."

O'Neill was the first to recover. "What the hell are you doing, Potter?" he demanded.

Harry sheepishly scratched the back of his head. "I…might have been in a playful mood. Sorry about that, it's just that the city's Artificial Intelligence was so stuffy I just couldn't resist pranking her on my way out."

"Did you say…artificial intelligence?" Rodney asked, picking himself up off of the floor. Apparently Harry's arrival had startled him so badly that he actually fell over.

"I did," Harry said. "She's a bit pretentious though, I'm not sure you folks will like her all that much. The only reason she was kind of okay with me was because I acted like I'm a lot more of a prudish pacifist than I really am. I get the feeling that the Alterans, and by extension their AI, greatly disapproved of the sort of warfare planets like Earth get involved in."

"What do you mean by that?" Dr. Weir asked.

Harry shrugged. "It's just a feeling, born from long experience with technologically advanced races. They look at you the same way you'd look at the 12th century Mongols: utterly barbaric in pretty much every way, but completely non-threatening on a technological level. Of course, they tend to forget that their ancestors were like that once, just like they forget that a Mongol born into their civilization would be basically indistinguishable from the rest of them. Well, unless the race you're dealing with isn't human, but that's a surface-level difference. It's all just a matter of context, really."

There was a pause as Harry let everyone digest that.

"Fortunately," Harry said, "I convinced her that your intentions are noble enough that she's willing to give you all a shot at impressing her. But…" he glanced at O'Neill, "it would probably be a good idea to brief the Marines about etiquette or something similar. They're used to violence being pretty much the only option when diplomacy fails, but races like the Alterans are used to stunning potential threats and containing them so securely that violence doesn't really even enter into the equation barring exceptionally extreme circumstances. Bridging the two philosophies is…complicated, in my experience."

O'Neill considered that. Then the general turned to Weir. "Well Doctor, you _are_ in charge of this whole thing. Would you like to do the honors?"

Everyone, Harry included, stared at O'Neill in disbelief.

"What?" The man asked. "I've been around Daniel long enough to realize that sometimes his wishy-washy nonsense is…not nonsense."

Harry's opinion of O'Neill rose significantly at that admission. Getting a read on the weathered military man was difficult, but underneath all that leathery exterior was a straightforward, decent person. Probably.

"Well…" Weir floundered, "I suppose I could give the marine escort a bit of a talking to about diplomacy, but I feel like it would mean a lot more coming from someone like you, General. In my experience, military men listen best to other military men."

Harry considered that, and then threw his own opinion into the mix. "Well, no one said that it has to be one or the other. General O'Neill could go first, say that everyone ought to listen to Dr. Weir and summarize his own position on the matter, and then Dr. Weir could lend her more eloquent disposition to the matter to clarify the finer points."

In the pause that followed, a quiet voice spoke up from outside the conversation. "Um…now might be a good time, too," Siler said, "the Marines in the gate room are looking a bit jumpy after Harry's…disappearing act."

 _Whoops._ "Sorry about that," Harry offered, "my dad was a prankster, and I just…can't help myself sometimes. Life would be boring without a little fun, you know?"

O'Neill frowned at Harry, but Weir was either better at hiding her feelings or didn't care as much. "Well," she said, "shall we, General?"

As the two left to address the marines, Harry stayed in the control and cast a few diagnostic charms on the potentia. He wanted to see just how much an intergalactic trip would drain an alteran power cell. By his calculations an intergalactic trip took a frankly ludicrous amount of power. And yet, according to his charms, the potentia's entropy had only increased by a tiny fraction. At this rate, it would take several thousand intergalactic wormholes to fully drain just _one_ potentia. "Incredible."

"What's incredible?" Rodney asked.

"The potentia," Harry said, belatedly realizing he'd spoken aloud. "It opened a wormhole connection that bridged 3 million light years, and it's barely drained at all. I've never seen anything like it, and that's saying something."

"Well, it was designed by the ancients," Rodney said matter-of-factly. "It makes sense that it would be more advanced than anything you've ever seen, they were practically demigods."

Harry chuckled. "Rodney, I have personally seen and walked around on a space station that was bigger than Earth's moon, capable of both faster than light _and_ conventional travel. It had a spherical power reactor with a diameter of over…10 miles, by your measurements, and this tiny little glowing gadget the size of my forearm outdoes it as easily as a nuclear reactor would outperform a AAA battery."

Rodney's eye widened. "A space station…bigger than the moon? How did it keep from collapsing under its own gravitational field?"

"Well, for one, the races that built it had long since mastered gravitational manipulation, so that wasn't too much of an issue. But they also had to keep the whole thing together during sublight acceleration maneuvers, and they did _that_ by making it out of materials that are sturdier than you likely realize is even possible, and energizing those materials in…unique ways that increased their structural integrity even further. I actually thought those energy fields were magical in nature, at first, because a similar phenomenon is possible with magic, but it turned out they were purely technological."

"That's just…"

"Amazing, yes. And yet it still pales in comparison to this," Harry said, indicating the potentia. "Honestly, it's pretty humbling. All that power, and yet you could fit it in a bloody _purse."_

...

 _Several minutes earlier_

Sheppard looked around nervously. Ever since Harry's disappearing act, the Colonel overseeing the marines had kept all of the men on high alert, even though Harry was a known ally and almost definitely not still in the room. Sheppard could already tell that he wouldn't get along with the man, which didn't bode well for their time together in Atlantis. Hopefully there would at least be _someone_ in the chain of command he could see eye to eye with; otherwise this assignment was liable to end in the same bureaucratic fashion as his time in Afghanistan.

He was distracted from his thoughts when one of the doors to the room opened and General O'Neill walked in, followed by Dr. Weir.

"At ease, men," the general said before the colonel could bark any orders, "our resident wizard was just being mischievous. I've had a talk with him about it, but he brought up some points of his own that need to be addressed." He looked around at the marines, then turned to the colonel. "This isn't the whole Atlantis contingent, is it?"

"No, sir."

"Call them in then, Colonel. We need to have a talk about how things are going to work in Atlantis."

"Sir?" the colonel asked.

The general waved a hand, dismissing the implied question. "I'll give you a full briefing later, Colonel, and it's best that we wait for the rest of your men to get here so that I don't have to repeat myself."

Well that was interesting. Sheppard was definitely starting to like General O'Neill a lot more than he liked the marine colonel. If he had a problem, maybe he'd be able to appeal up the chain of command.

Before long, the rest of the marines arrived, and the general walked up the ramp leading to the gate before turning to address them. Dr. Weir went with him, which struck Sheppard as odd, but he wasn't going to say anything.

"All right fellas, let's make one thing clear," the general began. "I'm your ultimate commanding officer on this assignment, technically. But you've all been on long distance assignments before, so you know that in reality, you'll be answering to someone much closer to home. You probably expected that someone to be Colonel Sumner here." He gestured to the colonel, who didn't look pleased at the implication that he wouldn't be in command. "To a certain extent, you're right about that, Colonel Sumner will have command over all military operations you undergo. _But,_ and this is an important but, Dr. Weir is going to be in charge of this expedition. You are a security force sent to escort a scientific mission, do you understand?"

"SIR, YES SIR!" the men all shouted in unison. Even Sheppard joined in. General O'Neill knew how to make his point, even if he was almost unbelievably casual about it.

"Good," the general said. "Now, since Dr. Weir is going to be the one who has the authority to tell you when you are and are not needed, we've decided it's best that she say a few words of her own, to make sure that there are no misconceptions down the line." He stepped back, ceding the floor to Dr. Weir.

"Thank you, General," she said, before turning to face the men. She paused for a moment, seeming to consider her words before opening her speech. "I understand that the military, no matter which branch, has a rather negative opinion of civilian oversight. I dealt with exactly this issue during my brief stint in command of this very facility, so I certainly understand the objections many of you are surely thinking right now. But let me make one thing clear. This whole expedition, yourselves included, is representing both the governments supporting it and the planet as a whole, whether you realize it or not. A military presence is being sent primarily as a precautionary measure, and I expect you all to act accordingly. We cannot afford to have the first glimpse of humanity that an alien power sees be hostile military action. There are indeed races out among the stars who would attack us either way, such as the Goa'uld, but we shouldn't take behavior like that for granted. I will not hesitate to authorize the use of force if we meet races like that, but you must also understand that, as a diplomat, my duty is to ensure that we, the emissaries of humanity, don't get caught up in an unnecessary war against yet another alien power we have very little hope of defeating." Dr. Weir paused, letting that sink in.

"I'm not trying to be your enemy here," she said simply, "I'm trying to work with you to ensure that the real enemies are dealt with, and that potential allies aren't put off by what they might see as aggressive tendencies. Defensive tactics, after all, can get quite aggressive at times. So, can we all agree to work together moving forward?"

The silence in the room was palpable. None of the men said anything, but Sheppard could tell that some of them were on the edge of objecting.

"The woman asked you a question, marines!" General O'Neill barked.

"YES SIR," they all shouted instinctively.

"That's more like it," the general said. "This is your commanding officer, I don't care if she doesn't have stripes. I expect you to treat her accordingly, do you understand me?"

"YES SIR!"

"Good."

Well, Sheppard thought to himself, at least that meant he wouldn't have to deal with the Colonel Sumner quite as much. Probably.

* * *

 _One week later_

Harry stared at Rodney. Rodney paced back and forth in the wizard's laboratory, clearly nervous.

"How am I going to go to the bathroom?" the man fretted. "God, I thought this thing was so cool, I didn't even think that it might trap me!"

"Yes, a bit of caution before activating a highly advanced 10,000 year old artifact might have been in order," Harry observed mildly.

"What?" Rodney spun, an accusing finger pointing at Harry, "You're acting like you don't even care!"

Harry smiled. "Rodney, you got yourself into this mess. You injected yourself with a gene-altering serum with the hope that you would be able to interact with technology that is, as they say, light-years ahead of anything you've ever worked with before, even including the Milky Way Stargates. What did you expect to happen?"

"Well…" Rodney trailed off.

"Part of the reason Lantis still refuses to show herself to you is the simple fact that things like this are still bound to happen around such a primitive expedition. I don't care how qualified you think you are, Rodney, you need to act a lot more carefully in the city that predates your entire civilization by several million years. Now, where exactly did you find the forcefield emitter?"

"In one of the labs."

"Which lab, exactly? This is important."

Rodney looked thoughtful. "I could take you there, if you want."

Harry shook his head. "That won't be necessary. What I need to know is where in the city the lab is located. If that was an experimental device, you're in a lot more trouble than if it was a refined mass-production model."

"Oh," Rodney said, "it was on the north pier, not too far from the nearest transporter to the center."

"So it was a mass-production model, then. That's the factory area, in a manner of speaking. Alright then, I need you to sit down and relax." Harry gestured to the area in front of Rodney, conjuring a comfortable armchair.

"And how's this supposed to help?" Rodney asked miserably, collapsing into the chair. Harry noted idly that the forcefield didn't keep Rodney from touching the chair.

"Alteran technology operates by mental command, remember? If you don't feel safe, it probably won't listen when you tell it to turn off. So I need you to relax and focus on something that makes you feel safe."

Rodney looked skeptical, but closed his eyes and relaxed into the chair. Harry surreptitiously shot a calming charm and then a cheering charm at the man, and thankfully the forcefield didn't deflect either one. A few moments later, the green device on Rodney's chest stopped glowing and fell off. Harry quickly summoned it to his hand, examining it with a practiced eye.

"Yes, definitely a mass-production model. Compact power cell, and it would have run out of power…oh dear. It would have lasted a few years, unless you put it under significant stress. Do you see now why I told you to be careful with this stuff?"

Rodney nodded sheepishly.

"Good. Now I'm going to keep this, to make sure that it won't activate by accident again. You, keep your nose out of trouble. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Harry." Rodney looked sufficiently chastised. It was amusing how closely a grown man could resemble a toddler who'd been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Harry shook his head as he watched the man leave his room. They hadn't even been in Atlantis for a week and Rodney had already found a way to get into trouble.

"They are so careless. I have half a mind to throw them out of this city, back to their homeworld where they at least can't destroy the legacy of my creators."

Harry turned to Lantis's avatar, which had just appeared behind him. "But you won't," he said confidently, "because they need every advantage they can get in their fight against Anubis. They might have destroyed his ship, but if your suspicions are correct, that didn't kill the being himself. And Anubis is just as much your enemy as theirs."

"I still disagree with your laissez-faire attitude toward these primitives!"

Harry smirked. "I was just as primitive as they were, once. I got better. They can too, if you just give them time."

"How much time?" Lantis asked pointedly, "The pirasuti will wake in less than 50 of your years, and they will not suffer any humans wandering around with technology as advanced as what these primitives have brought with them, let alone anything they may take from my city."

Harry waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about these parasites of yours. If humanity has taught me anything over the years, it's to never, ever count them out of a fight. They'll be defending the most useful asset they've _ever_ acquired, as well as the only viable path back to their homeworld. They'll fight to defend this city just as fiercely as your ancestors did. Perhaps even more fiercely, because we primitive humans tend to remember more about the realities of war than a race that was so enlightened that they literally ascended into godhood."

Lantis looked skeptical. "And will they understand the forces they attempt to control? The forces they're trying to fight?"

"We're nothing if not quick learners, Lantis. It only took me 500 years to get to where I am today. How long did it take the Alterans?"

The avatar pursed her lips. "Very well then, Harry Potter. I will trust you, for now. But understand that I will not so much as speak to these primitives until they show proof that they are worthy of the legacy my creators left behind." And with that, her avatar once again faded from sight.

Harry chuckled, knowing full well that she could still hear him. "You're such a drama queen, Lantis. You don't have to get your circuits in such a twist, they're just curious and very, very new at this." And it wasn't like she would stay completely out of events, either. Something told him that if push came to shove, she would find herself unable to keep from protecting her creators' descendants. Indirectly, if nothing else.

...

Amusingly, Harry's prediction came true not three hours later, when Lantis materialized in his laboratory looking slightly upset.

"Harry, you have to stop them!"

Harry put down the shield device he'd been examining. Curiously, its circuits essentially looked like a very advanced shield charm he'd learned after leaving Hogwarts, with power from the internal cell running through them to project a semi-permeable force field that let non-threats in, so long as they were subconsciously whitelisted by the wearer.

"What's got you up in arms this time, Lantis?" Harry asked patiently.

"The primitives are going to attempt to _rescue_ one of my creator's ships, a ship they wouldn't even know about if _you_ hadn't fully reactivated my long-range scanners. Harry, they're going to get themselves killed! The pirasuti will no doubt have detected the ship as well, and if your expedition leads them back here, all will be lost!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, Lantis, that would be suitably dramatic, wouldn't it?" Pausing to consider possible outcomes, Harry sat on a nearby stool. "Tell me about this ship. Why does Weir want to rescue it? Surely the crew isn't still alive after all this time. For that matter, how did it even survive the war?"

Lantis hesitated. "The ship was on a stealth mission and thought lost during the war. Presumably something went wrong while they were in transit, and neither we nor the pirasuti ever found the ship. As for the crew…they may yet live. Vessels of that class came equipped with enough stasis pods to sustain the crew almost indefinitely. My records indicate that this particular vessel was stranded late in the war, well over 10,000 of your years ago, but many of the crew could still be alive in stasis. Their bodies would have aged a great deal even while suspended, but their minds should have remained quite healthy."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "And you let the 'primitive tech monkeys' figure this out?"

"Of course not! They seem more interested in seizing the vessel for themselves. Some are even suggesting that it could be used as a weapon in their wars!"

Harry smirked. "And why not? Finders, keepers, as the saying goes. Even if we do manage to salvage the vessel, it doesn't sound like the crew will be in the best shape to actually operate it. Hell, even with the best stasis technology I've ever seen, the crew would be on the verge of death after all that time."

Lantis stared at him, clearly disgusted. "You are no better than they are. Thinking only of your own problems even though you know the threat that permeates this entire galaxy."

"Well, yes, about that," Harry said carefully, "I don't think these pirasuti are actually all that threatening. By your account, they're basically peaceful farmers who just so happen to feed on human life force. They're hardly an interstellar empire, even if they do occupy most of the inhabitable systems in a dwarf galaxy."

"These 'peaceful farmers' wiped out the majority of my creators, Harry. They are savages and parasites who have terrorized this galaxy for 500 generations unchallenged-"

"And that means they've also likely grown complacent in the absence of any real threats to their way of life," Harry interjected. "If you ignore the details of their methods, they're nothing more than farmers, carefully culling and tending to their flock. It's barbaric, but only because they're culling sapient beings. Surely your creators weren't so peace-drunk that they condemned carnivores for their diet?"

Lantis sniffed haughtily. "Your metaphor lacks meaning. The pirasuti are not animals, and they should not be judged in the same way as one would judge a mindless beast."

"You're honestly telling me that the alterans never encountered a sapient race of carnivores?" Harry asked incredulously. Lantis pointedly refused to answer. "It's the same principal, at the end of the day. The circle of life, the predators consuming their prey, and while the food sometimes going along with things because it doesn't know better, it also sometimes fighting back in doomed rebellion."

"Surely you don't condone the atrocities the pirasuti have committed!"

Harry sighed. "Well, no, of course not. The livestock never much likes the people who run the slaughterhouse. I'm just used to having to take a step back and look at the whole situation for what it really is. Vampiric species exist all across the multiverse, and rarely do they limit themselves entirely to 'lesser' species of non-sentient beings. That doesn't mean that they're universally evil, it means they're fundamentally different from you and I."

Lantis absorbed that for several seconds, before dismissing the argument entirely. "You've gotten us sidetracked. You must stop your people from putting this city in danger! Even if the pirasuti are mere farmers, they are farmers with ships the size of mountains, and enough numbers to overwhelm even this city's impressive defenses!"

Harry smiled. "Yes, well, I suppose I should do something about that. Still, this conversation isn't over, Lantis. Your creators were admirable, but they apprear to have tainted you a bit with their love of peace. Normally a fondness for non-violence isn't a bad thing, but there are times when one has to factor in the unfortunate necessity of violent deeds."

Harry left her to stew on that. And with a quiet _crack,_ he was gone.

…

Dr. Weir didn't bat an eye when Harry apparated directly outside of her office, even though the crack of displaced air was quite audible and the transparent walls allowed her to fully witness his sudden appearance. Harry was impressed. Usually people took a lot longer to get used to him popping up unannounced like that. This was barely his fifth time apparating around her, and she already treated it like an everyday occurrence, simply glancing up from whatever she was reading on her computer and waving him inside.

"So," Harry said after seating himself across from her, "I hear you've found a ship."

Weir frowned. "How on Earth do you already know about that? I barely heard about it five minutes ago, and that was only because my office is so close to the control room."

"We're not on Earth, for one," Harry said with a smile, "but as for how I heard, the city's AI you don't quite believe me about noticed what was going on and…wanted me to 'stop the primitives from ruining her creators' legacy'."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. She may not have said it in those _exact_ words, but that was the gist of it. And quite aside from worrying that you might see the ship as nothing more than a highly advanced weapon, she also thinks that these pirasuti she keeps telling me about will have noticed the ship."

Weir frowned. "I thought the pirasuti were a race of parasites. How would they notice a spaceship?"

"Ah…I may not have been clear, earlier, though to be fair I don't know too much about them myself. The pirasuti are a race of _sentient_ parasites. They feed on alteran life force, or failing that, on human life force. They're apparently humanoid, gray-skinned, incredibly strong and unbelievably numerous. Or they were 10,000 years ago; Atlantis hasn't exactly been able to keep an eye on current galactic events while it hid at the bottom of the ocean. But among the things that aren't likely to have changed, they tend to fly around in spaceships the size of an entire mountain, sort of mobile cities that they use to travel between worlds as they…well, as they cull their human flock."

Weir's eyes widened in shock. "They…cull entire worlds?"

Harry nodded. "Once every few centuries or so. It seems they can sustain themselves on the humans they abduct for that long, and the intervening time is long enough for the human population to recover from decimation like the pirasuti tend to inflict."

Weir slumped back into her chair. "And I thought the Goa'uld were bad…"

"I'm afraid the Goa'uld are quite mild, as hostile galaxy-spanning civilizations go," Harry observed wryly.

"And these pirasuti?" Weir asked, looking intrigued.

Harry considered that. "Well, as I told Lantis, they're basically farmers. Toppling the current regime would probably be about as easy as it was for the Europeans to conquer the Americas…provided we exercise a lot of caution, and get our hands on more alteran technology than just one Atlantis-class city-ship. The city shields may hold out practically indefinitely, but we can't do much more than hunker down and hide if the full force of the pirasuti fleet comes down on us."

Weir blinked. "Farmers? They cull entire planets!"

"Yes, they do," Harry allowed, "but if they were dumb savages, they would exterminate their food supply instead of merely culling it. They've reverse-engineered a lot of alteran technology, probably even more than the Goa'uld have, and they've had a very long peacetime to carefully integrate that technology into their ships and weapons. But I still get the sense that they're not so much fighters as highly evolved insectoid farmers. Something like you'd get if a mosquito suddenly got smart enough to graduate from Oxford. They beat the Alteran civilization in this galaxy because they bred like…well, like insects, and overwhelmed the Alteran fleets through sheer numbers. Even Atlantis might not last under a sustained barrage from the entire fleet, if they kept it up long enough. I suspect the pirasuti just didn't realize that, or didn't care once the residents of the city fled due to supply shortages."

"And these…pirasuti, you're saying that they're probably already investigating the ship we detected with our long-range sensors?" Weir looked suitably disturbed at the thought.

"If we can find it, Doctor, the pirasuti probably can too. According to the records, Lantis says, the ship was likely damaged in the war. They were on a stealth mission and never returned. The ship was presumed destroyed, and the war ended shortly afterward. It's entirely possible that the crew couldn't repair the ship well enough to return, and stowed away in the on-board stasis pods."

"Stasis pods?"

"Think cryogenics, except the technology is far more advanced, and actually keeps people alive instead of freezing their blood. The point is, if the ship is running on automated systems and limited power, it could easily have preserved its crew throughout the entire span it's on record as 'Missing in Action.' Only now, it's detected something about Atlantis's activation, perhaps an automated Lantean signal on some secure cosmic network, and the ship has reactivated its primary power systems in an attempt to return home. That sort of thing would light it up on _everybody's_ scanners, ours included. If the pirasuti are still out there, and there's no reason to believe they're not, we'll need to hurry to beat them to the punch."

Dr. Weir considered that carefully for nearly a full minute before asking, "And how are we going to do that? I'm sure you've heard by now that there are several…shuttlecraft in a hanger near here that appear to be designed for Stargate travel, but they wouldn't be much use for a search and rescue operation."

Harry grinned. "Ah, but your scientists probably haven't tooled around with the shuttles enough yet to realize that they're actually highly advanced stealth-enabled research/force projection fightercraft. They don't have onboard hyperdrives, but with the right modifications, they can do just about everything else, even without bringing extra hardware on board."

Weir's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. "How…how could you possible know that? Rodney said you've spent the last week shut away in your personal laboratory."

"Oh, it was easy enough to access the specifications remotely with a bit of help from Lantis," Harry said, "And I've always been interested in flying machines. I may not look like a fighter pilot, but I'm probably just as qualified as your top pilots on Earth, if not more so when it comes to vacuum-based craft. Believe it or not, witches and wizards on my Earth flew around on broomsticks in a sport called Quidditch, and I never really lost a passion for flying after I stopped playing."

Weir blinked. "You know, out of all the things you've told me about yourself, that surprises me the least. You might be good at hiding it, but you're an adrenaline junkie at heart, aren't you?"

Harry laughed at that. "Guilty as accused, Doctor. I do try to reign myself in most of the time, but there's nothing quite like the thrill of an adrenaline rush. After living on the move for several centuries, I'll take enjoyment anywhere I can find it."

Dr. Weir's eyes danced knowingly in a way that reminded Harry of Dumbledore. "Should I assume that you'd like to go on the mission to explore this ship we've found, then?" she asked.

"Yes," Harry said simply. "I don't want to brag, but I might be the best chance any exploratory mission to that ship has of coming back alive. The pirasuti may be farmers, but they're farmers with a tight control over most, if not all of the inhabitable planets in this galaxy. Even when they're mostly dormant they're nothing to be trifled with."

The humor fell from Weir's eyes as he said that. "I'll talk with Colonel Sumner about a marine escort, as well. Do you think we should send some of the more experienced technicians along as well? They might be able to help with repairs to the damaged systems."

Harry nodded. "That's a good idea. The gateships have seating room for at least 12, and enough standing room for more than that in a pinch, but we should probably keep any crew compliment down to 12. It's not a good idea to be standing up without proper restraints if we get into any trouble."

"I'll be sure to tell the Colonel. Was there anything else you needed to tell me?"

Harry shook his head. "No, I should probably start getting my things together for an away mission. So long as I'm invited, of course?"

Weir smiled. "I wouldn't dream of trying to keep you from going, Harry. I saw what you were capable of in Nevada, and I'd rather you go on the initial mission than stay behind and be forced to mount a rescue."

Harry smiled gratefully. "Well then. I guess I'd better pack my things."

And with little more than a farewell wave from Dr. Weir, he apparated away to do just that.

She didn't even blink in surprise as the crack of air cavitating in his wake echoed around her office.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, this one certainly took a long time to write. Don't worry though; the next chapter shouldn't take nearly as long to write. Most of the time I spent 'working' on this chapter was actually spent figuring out exactly how events are going to go now that Harry's completely messed with the timeline and practically overwritten the canon universe entirely.**

 **Actually, canon's probably still out there somewhere, drowning in horror and barely managing to save the city by cycling through potentia over 10,000 years and activating an emergency-last-resort measure that Janus only programmed in as a precaution, but this timeline is now a significant causal distance away from that one, which makes things harder on us poor fanfiction writers who are trying to figure out what happens next. Anyway, thanks for the patience, and don't forget to leave a review or three!**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


	12. Chapter 12 Omake 1: Wormverse crossover

**A/N: So…it's been a while. Sorry. This story…it's one I need a certain mindset to write, and I sometimes find it hard to get back into that mindset. The disadvantage to reading fanfiction is that we starving writers aren't getting paid, so we don't have to write stuff when we don't** _ **feel**_ **like it.**

 **On the bright side, I think I've recaptured that mindset, so the former Chapter 12, now Chapter 13, is in development as the first readers arrive to this omake. Yes, you read that right, this chapter is non-canon. It's a what-if scenario that will hopefully make the plot bunnies in my head calm down and let me focus some more attention back onto SG-Harry.**

 **It's also a teaser as to what my plans are for Harry and Atlantis in general, but I promise they won't get lost amid the multiverse in the canon timeline…probably.**

* * *

 _SG-Harry Omake 1: What if Altantis visited Earth Bet? (After Harry fixes it up, of course. Wouldn't be fun landing in _that _hot mess in a 10,000 year old city with engines that can technically function…on a good day.)_

* * *

 **Atlantis**

 **Lantea**

 **2011**

"And you're sure this…Wormhole Drive will work?"

Harry eyed Dr. Weir as he contemplated the question. He'd learned how to beat around the bush with her during his time on Atlantis, but he'd also learned when to drop the nonsense and be perfectly honest. This was one of those times. "I've run the numbers. There's a less than chance, less than one in a million, that something could go wrong. There's an even smaller chance that something could go so catastrophically wrong that explosions enter the picture. But realistically speaking? I'm confident that this will go without a hitch. I've been consulting Lantis extensively and working on this drive system, both for research and refurbishing purposes, for the last year and a half. Even in the very, very unlikely scenario that something starts to go wrong, I know the systems well enough that I can manage any problems before anyone's life is in danger."

Dr. Weir was quiet as she absorbed that. Then, after several seconds, she said, "Being able to transport Atlantis over such vast distances would be a very valuable tactical advantage for any number of reasons, some of them more administrative than military. But I do feel the need to ask; could you replicate the technology?"

"Of course I could, Doctor, I would just need the right materials," Harry said. Modesty would get him nowhere in this situation. Nor would dishonesty. "But you and I both know that I won't do that. Not until your scientists prove to me that _they_ can replicate the technology. I'll fabricate a beginner's guide to Wormhole Drive FTL, and I certainly won't stop Atlantis staff from studying the drive itself, but I draw the line at producing completely overpowered drive systems for a civilization that already has a way to get everywhere they need to go."

Dr. Weir smiled in understanding; this was a conversation that they'd had in many forms over the years. "I do have to ask, though, as you well know. If I don't ask then the politicians back home will chew my ears off until I do."

Harry matched her smile. "We all have our parts to play, and theirs is to eternally vie for more and more power until they find that there's no more power to be had. But I take it from your tone that you'll authorize a test run?"

Dr. Weir nodded. "I'll work on the official paperwork and letting Stargate Command know we're coming. How long should it be before we can start the test?"

Harry grinned mischeviously. "Give the order, ma'am, and we can be on Earth before you could blink."

Weir blinked, almost carefully, her face going blank. "You're being serious, aren't you?" she asked. She'd learned a long time ago not to doubt him when he got mischievous. And not to take anything he said lightly, either.

"Yes. The drive system isn't exactly voice-activated, but Lantis could override manual controls, provided she receives a direct order from someone she respects."

Weir smiled softly. "Well then. I'll be careful what I say on the subject until we're ready to start the test proper."

Harry nodded. That was one of the reasons she'd earned Lantis's respect.

* * *

"Stargate Command, this is Atlantis Home. We're fully checked out, preparing for liftoff."

"…I read you, Atlantis Home. Safe travels, and we'll see you soon."

Harry grinned. "Here's hoping, Walter. We need to get out of the gravity well first. Calculating a 4-dimensional trajectory is hard enough without dealing with _that_ can of worms."

Suddenly, O'Neill's implacably dulcet tones interjected. "Cut the chatter, Atlantis home. If you're free enough to be chatting about your 4th-dimensional whatevers, you've got the spare time to run one last triple-check."

Harry cleared his throat, just managing to avoid a chuckle at the general's unflappable attitude. "Yes sirree Jack, General," he said aloud. The subspace link cut out in what Harry couldn't help but interpret as an irritated fashion. He grinned again. It'd be a cold day in hell before he treated a General with proper military courtesy, but O'Neil's boundless patience for his antics had long since earned his respect.

"You know, you could follow proper radio protocols, Harry." Dr. Weir said from behind him.

Harry chuckled at that. "They understand the message I was communicating, and that's good enough for me."

He no longer had to look to know that Weir was shaking her head in bemusement. He agreed with the sentiment, though his bemusement came from a slightly different perspective on the situation.

"All right everybody, look alive, I'm bringing the engines online in 5," he said, pushing down the humor in favor of piloting the city-sized spaceship. He'd done some pretty daring stunts in his time, but by his reckoning this beat all of those combined for the sheer spectacle alone.

Sinking deep into Lantis's systems, casually turned on the initial dampers, calibrated them for liftoff velocity, added the appropriate safety margins for sudden engine failure, and then brought Atlantis's long-silent engines to full-bore. The city began to rise at 10 meters per second. He absent-mindedly smiled at the shocked noise the command crew was making at their speed. He _might_ have neglected to give them any accurate idea of just how fast a Lantea-class City-ship could move when adequately motivated.

One voice broke through the chaos, in shrillness as much as anything else, as Rodney exclaimed, "Holy shit! We're accelerating at a little more than _one G!"_ The chaotic noise quieted briefly as the command crew absorbed that, and then began talking amongst themselves more quietly.

"You didn't think they covered the city in a bunker-class energy shield just for shits and giggles, did you?" Harry asked, absently noting the increase in velocity as they crossed into the upper atmosphere and air density dropped noticeably. The inertial dampers automatically increased system loads to compensate, and Harry couldn't help but admire Lantis's incredible aptitude with the city's systems. She could almost fly the city herself, aside from her general inability to perform complex maneuvers or any secondary tasks if she was forced to focus on such a strenuous task. Even Inter was quietly bearing the brunt of Harry's mental load so that he could do more than just pray that the city flew in a straight line and didn't hit anything. Lantis was simply doing the AI equivalent of looking over his shoulder to make sure he didn't somehow mess up while he piloted the honking massive ship whose systems he still didn't fully grasp even _with_ Inter's help.

Honestly, he appreciated the guiding hand. He might be a natural flier, but the difference between a broomstick and a City-ship was so massive it took his breath away to contemplate exactly what he was flying.

Quite suddenly, he noticed that they had left the exosphere and were accelerating toward an eccentric orbit at nearly 3 Gs. He cut the engines, increased the inertial dampers to max, and grinned. "All right. Who wants one last look at Lantea?" Not bothering to wait for an answer, he casually performed a kick-flip turn, inverting the ship in 10 seconds flat. And the only shock he heard from people was because the little blue marble looked small from this distance. Harry shook his head in amusement. Even Rodney's highly analytical mind hadn't noticed the .3G maneuver he'd just pulled.

Well, everyone remembered their first time seeing a planet from space in person, he mused to himself as he carefully maneuvered Atlantis into an Earth-like orbit. This jump would have enough variables without adding orbital velocity into the mix. _Think this is far enough, Lantis?_

 _This distance should be adequate. We are orbiting the planet below, but according to my calculations we will arrive in orbit of Earth, so that is ideal. You should, however, adjust our orbital velocity to match something which will keep us in a stable orbit once we reach Earth._

Harry performed a quick mental calculation, and then suppressed a wince. _Can't do that. We'd be in an eccentric orbit here, and that'd be no good for having a relatively constant speed on arrival. We'll just have to adjust the wormhole trajectory to compensate._

Lantis blew meaningless static into his head for 1.5 seconds, the digital equivalent of a sigh. _You say that as if it will be easy._

Harry grinned. _If it were easy, everyone would do it._

Lantis was silent for several seconds. _You have a point,_ she allowed.

"All right," Harry said aloud, "we're calculating the trajectory now. We should be ready for Wormhole Jump in…"

 _30 seconds,_ Lantis provided.

"…in about 30 seconds."

Dr. Weir raised an eyebrow at him as she turned away from her spot near the exterior window. "And what about your claims that you could do this at the drop of a hat?"

He had made claims to that effect, hadn't he? "Well, we could probably get you somewhere in the neighborhood without any real effort. Lantis still has Earth's location and galactic velocity stored in her memory banks, so we'd only have a margin of error somewhere around…a light year or so, given the time that's passed."

"A light year."

"In any given direction, yes. 10,000 year old navigation data is notoriously unreliable. What we're doing right now is using data I gathered from the Milky Way gate network to get a precise enough read on Earth's current location that we'll leave orbit here and come out in orbit around Earth." Theoretically.

 _Calculations complete._

 _Thanks, Lantis._ "And we're ready to go. Everybody ready to make history?"

"Didn't the Alterans already use this technology though?" Rodney asked.

Well, not very often, no. But that wasn't the point. "We'll still be the fastest moving object in the entire known universe, matching the speed record set 10,000 years ago. That's historic enough to count in my book."

 _Adjusting calculations to compensate for elapsed time,_ Lantis said pointedly.

"Ahem, yes. But in any case, we should really be off." _Ready, Lantis?_

 _Yes._

Harry looked to Dr. Weir. "If you would give the official order, Doctor?"

Weir smiled. "Take us away, Harry."

 _Jump,_ Harry commanded the Lantean systems. And then the universe folded in on itself.

* * *

 **Vancouver**

 **Earth Bet**

 **2011**

Dragon was idly monitoring the S-class threat monitors during the early morning when it happened. There was a sudden alert in the orbital monitoring dedicated to monitoring the Simurgh. A facial expression, and wing movements that looked…defensive? Shocked? Why was the Simurgh frowning?

The question was answered as, mere seconds later, sensors that had last seen use during Professor Haywire's subjugation blared alerts into her systems. A hole in reality had formed in Earth orbit, nearly a quarter of the way around the world from the Simurgh's current position. Even as she activated the Simurgh sirens across all jurisdictions that accepted her influence, she noted a near 16% increase in the Simurgh's confirmed detection range. Primarily because that meant that the Simurgh was perfectly aware of the satellites that monitored her orbits of the Earth, _and she hadn't shot them down yet._ That probably wasn't a good sign.

10.9283 seconds after the Simurgh alerts went out, the Triumvirate opened a channel.

"Where?" asked Alexandria, wasting no time.

"Orbit," Dragon said, also wasting no time. "And either she's playing to an audience, or the interdimensional wormhole that just opened has her worried."

"Explain," Alexandria ordered. Dragon would have been offended under any other circumstances.

"The detectors that alerted us of Professor Haywire's actions shortly before his death just picked up an interdimensional wormhole in low-earth orbit. Whatever it is, it lasted precisely one second before vanishing, and may have disgorged something during that time. The anomaly was approximately 25 kilometers in diameter."

"Good God," Eidolon muttered. Even Alexandria was speechless for a moment.

"We need exact coordinates for the anomaly," Alexandria stated after taking a single second to gather her thoughts.

Dragon quoted the orbital figures. "I have a satellite telescope moving into position as we speak," she said, "One of the Simurgh detection network. I will have a visual in 5 minutes."

Dragon's facial processing registered a brief hint of reluctance in Alexandria's impassive features. "Keep us informed," the titular Alexandria package said simply, "we'll leave this line open."

Because that was the best even the Triumvirate could do. Even if Eidolon conjured up a power to survive the vaccum of space, Alexandria could neither breathe in space nor fly at orbital velocity, and even Legend had to leave his breaker state to use his lasers. And that wasn't even mentioning the folly in personally investigating something that made the _Simurgh_ nervous.

4 minutes and 55 seconds later, the diverted Simurgh detection satellite rose above the curvature of the Earth and had a direct line of sight on the location of the wormhole. When she saw what had emerged and calculated the approximate size, her software stuttered for a second as it struggled to compensate for the sheer improbability of a _city_ floating in space, surrounded by…was that a force field with a surface area of over 150 kilometers?

Forcibly suppressing the instinct to calculate the absurd energy requirements of such a thing, she spoke into the channel the Triumvirate had left open. "Houston, we have a problem."

Considering the circumstances, she had calculated that humor was necessary to maintain morale.

* * *

Harry shook himself blearily. _Lantis, was that normal distortion, or did something go wrong?_

There was a worryingly long pause. _Calculations indicate a 20% likelihood that destination coordinates were reached successfully. Spacetime distortion was .001% outside of established tolerances._

Oh no. _Lantis…which variables are off?_

 _Temporal coordinates indicate readings similar to those found in your transdimensional wormhole. All special coordinates, including velocity, have returned no anomalies._

"Fuck," Harry said aloud.

The generally congratulatory air in the command center ground to a halt. "What's wrong, Harry?" the techie on the scanners asked, "I'm reading our current location as Earth orbit, 500 kilometers up."

We're not in Kansas anymore, Harry thought, but damned if it didn't look like they were. "I have reason to suspect that…" he hesitated. Should he voice his concerns aloud? Yes, they would only be hurt worse if they didn't know right away. "…to suspect that we're not in orbit around the correct Earth," he finished.

Dr. Weir's eyes widened, even as Rodney gaped at him. "You mean…" Rodney asked.

Harry locked eyes with Dr. Weir. "There was an anomaly approximately a thousandth of one percent outside of tolerances in the temporal calculations. And rather than travel forward or backward along the timeline, we went sideways, unless I miss my guess."

"…sideways." Dr. Weir said faintly, keeping an admirable amount of composure under the circumstances.

"Yes, Dr. Weir," Harry said, "sideways. I came from an Earth that was all but identical to your own using a 5-dimensional wormhole. Unfortunately, even a 4-dimensional wormhole like the one we used to cross the space between galaxies can exit its timeline of origin if things go exactly right…or in this case, exactly wrong."

Even Rodney looked confused by that, so Harry simplified things. "Time travel is nothing more than exiting the traditional 3 dimensions at one 4D coordinate and entering back into them at a different 4D coordinate. Wormholes, like the one we just used to move the entire city between galaxies, do exactly the same thing, except we calculated the variables specifically to _prevent_ movement through the 4th dimension. But then something pulled us a fraction of a percent off our calculated course through 4D space, which resulted in…a step to the side on arrival, essentially. Correct coordinates in every axis aside from the 4th one."

Dr. Weir's face paled just a shade. "How certain are you of this?"

 _Lantis?_ Harry prompted.

 _I have examined your memories of modern Earth's landforms. The islands you call 'Newfoundland' and 'Kyushu' are both absent from this planet._

Bloody hell. "Dr. Weir, last you heard, Newfoundland still existed, correct? The large island off the East coast of Canada?"

She nodded hesitantly.

"The planet below us doesn't have a Newfoundland. Or Kyushu, for that matter."

"…what?"

Harry looked around, but there were no geography majors on the command crew. He supposed that was fair, considering that Earth geography was worse than useless on an entirely different planet. "Neither island is particular big by American standards, but there are several US states which take up less space than either Newfoundland or Kyushu. If they were present, they would be hard to miss with sensors as sensitive as the ones this city is equipped with."

Dr. Weir was quiet for a long time, and so were the rest of the command crew. He knew how they felt. He had once felt much the same, once he'd realized the final price of his immortality ritual. This situation, however, was different from his in one significant way.

"On the bright side, Lantis calculated the course that brought us here to a degree of precision that means retracing our steps, at the very least back to Lantea, shouldn't be terribly difficult."

There it was, Harry thought as he practically _felt_ the hope return to the room. He understood that hope all too well, because he was experiencing something similar, if tempered by 500 years of failed attempts. This was the hope that, just maybe, there was a way home.

 _Harry, something is approaching! Something the likes of which not even my creators ever recorded!_

Harry sighed. And there it was, every damned time. Just this once, it'd be nice if the proverbial other shoe _didn't_ drop.

* * *

Dragon's network notified her instantly when the Simurgh, displaying a worrying disregard for the laws of physics and momentum, abruptly went from orbital velocity on a counterclockwise trajectory to orbital velocity on a clockwise trajectory.

"The Simurgh just pulled a turn that should have generated forces in excess of 1,600 Gs and is heading straight for the city," Dragon informed the Triumvirate. And at that news, even the three most powerful heroes on the planet began to worry. Dragon could relate. If the Simurgh used her telekinesis to fly, as many speculated she did, that meant that she could flatten all but the strongest brutes like a pancake with telekinesis alone, and all her throwing buildings about was nothing more than a façade.

"What is the city doing?" Alexandria demanded.

"Apparently, nothing. It has maintained orbital velocity, but I can't be sure they even know the Simurgh can see them."

Alexandria's eyes narrowed. "You are under the impression that this city is from an alternate reality, and not a Simurgh plot." It wasn't a question.

"It is the most likely scenario considering the structure of the anomaly the city arrived from," Dragon said succinctly.

The Triumvirate shared a glance whose meaning escaped Dragon, and suddenly Alexandria was no longer in the frame of the visual transmission.

"Where did she go?" Dragon asked.

Eidolon's mask turned briefly toward Legend, before the second most powerful parahuman on the planet said simply, "She went to consult the oracle."

Dragon wondered at the fact that Eidolon himself wasn't using a thinker power to serve as the proverbial oracle himself, but was quickly distracted by a sudden explosion of lights from the orbiting city.

* * *

 **Cauldron Base**

 **Unnamed Earth**

 **2011**

Alexandria stepped through a doorway even as Contessa said, "The Path is useless."

"What do you mean, the Path is useless?"

Contessa sighed. "There is a man aboard the city. I believe he is manning the helm, in whatever sense a helm exists on a vessel so large. No Path I can create fails to result in my immediate capture by this man through methods which my passenger cannot seem to understand, let alone counter. Any time he captures me, the Path simply ends."

"So it is possible to open a Door on the city, and the city is crewed by humans?"

Contessa nodded.

Alexandria considered what Contessa had told her for nearly a minute, practically a lifetime by her standards, and then left through a Door to the Triumvirate's Endbringer meeting point.

Contessa relaxed. The Path hinted at action by the Simurgh, assuming the interference wasn't from Scion himself, but this was the best course of action she had found. She could only hope that it would work as intended.

"Doorway," she said, and the Doormaker knew where she wanted to go. She'd already spent 5 steps of the plan convincing him that opening the door there was a good idea, after all.

* * *

Even as Harry heard the scanner operator notifying the command crew about the incoming object, he was submerging his senses in the readings to examine it for himself. What he found baffled him, and so he ordered Inter to categorize and log each sensor reading, before filtering out all the ones that made sense. Less than 30% of the readings disappeared. Great. He was just beginning to puzzle through the contradictory mass readings two different sensor arrays were receiving when alarm flooded his mind and his attention was forcibly pulled to a small anomaly right in front of the Stargate. Remarkably, even though the anomaly read as a wormhole itself, it hadn't conducted onto the Stargate like Harry's had all those years ago, but that thought was pushed aside as a woman stepped through and the wormhole neatly shrunk into nonexistence. There was really only one option here, under the circumstances.

"Intruder, state your intentions and drop any weapons you possess," Harry demanded calmly. The command crew, who hadn't actually noticed her yet, started at his command.

The intruder, however, merely reached into her jacket and pulled out a single pistol, which she slid across the floor away from her. "I come in peace, seeking aid which I have reason to suspect you can offer," she said.

 _Harry, there is something guiding the woman's movements, and it is uncomfortably similar to the approaching object._

Without hesitating, Harry apparated directly behind her and cast a binding charm…which she _dodged_ as she calmly turned to him and said, "We do not have time to fight, Harry Potter. The thing approaching this city does not merely cause destruction, but twists the minds of those she fights so that their futures are full of pain for themselves and everyone they love."

Harry paused as he took that in. "Okay, so let's just say you're not playing the long game and planning to stab us in the back when she's about to lose. How do we fight her?"

"I can See many things, Harry Potter. Your arrival here was not one of those things, but neither is the thing that now approaches. All I can do is hope that my previous blindness to your impact on the timeline means that you have enough power to defeat her when the greatest heroes on the planet below have failed to do so in the decade since she appeared to terrorize humanity."

Bloody hell, but Fate never did play a subtle game around him, did she? "All right then. Do you know what must happen next, oh mysterious intruding Seer?"

The woman smiled. "Yes, Mr. Potter, I do. And you may call me Contessa." And then, as Harry was about to escort her to a containment cell, she stepped through another door-shaped wormhole. He caught a glimpse of the exact containment cell he'd been planning on apparating her to before the wormhole closed. Bloody smartarse seers. _Lantis, activate that containment cell, and be sure that you add E1 energy to the shield frequencies. That should, theoretically, block her wormholes. But keep an eye on her anyway, just in case she saw that coming and knows how to counteract it._

Lantis broadcast unfiltered amusement into his mind. _You are not the first teleporter I have had aboard, Harry. And my creators were no strangers to beings that knew the future._

 _Right._ Harry was still getting used to that. _Distance and speed of the approaching object?_

 _300 kilometers, gaining on our orbit by 2 kilometers per second while maintaining our trajectory._

Hellfire and damnation, that should be impossible without…that wasn't important. Harry opened a line to the secondary command room. "Sheppard, prepare for combat conditions and drone support. I'll focus on navigation up here."

"Yes sir," came the response.

Harry apparated back up the command deck. "The incoming object is gaining fast and likely hostile," he said even as he tilted the city away from said threat and increased both the inertial dampeners and engines to full power. A casual subroutine from Inter ensured that their path around the planet would remain circular. "There can be no doubt it's coming for us, because it's matching our orbital trajectory. I recommend a flight of drones for suppression, followed by a diplomatic attempt if conditions allow it."

Dr. Weir considered that, and then nodded.

"Sheppard, one flight for suppression, shoot only to disable," Harry said, quietly instructing Inter plot several hyperspace trajectories around the planet and solar system out of habit.

The flight of drones lit up the sensors as they flew toward the pursuing object. It was in visual range, so Harry projected a magnified holographic view of the object just in front of the command deck. Then he swore profusely as the oddly angelic figure danced through a thousand drones as though they weren't even there. Bloody seers were practically impossible to fight. At least they seemed to be able to slow the angel-thing's gain on them to a mere meter per second. Though it was a truly desperate situation when an enemy gaining ground at a meter per second was the _good_ news.

 _Inter, hyperjump around the planet in 10 seconds. Lantis, coordinate and input calculations to navigation._ It was a tactic he'd used before to great effect. Most people didn't realize that the presence of a gravity well actually made curved trajectories easier to calculate because they'd never been desperate enough to try. Harry…no longer considered such a maneuver an act of desperation.

The drones made admirable attempts to pin down the angel as it chased them, using their small mass and superior numbers to achieve several near-misses. But whatever simulation of reality the thing was using to see the future could apparently calculate multi-phase energy weapon trajectories without batting an eye, and had practice countering swarm tactics. "Sheppard, don't bother. We'll need more than just drones to hit this one."

"What?!"

"Just set them to detonate all at once when we jump, I have plan."

Sheppard barely had time to do so before the city jumped through hyperspace.

* * *

Dragon swore viciously in every language she knew, simultaneously. Then she unmuted the transmission to the Triumvirate. "The city just teleported halfway around the planet. They are now in orbit over the Pacific Ocean, assuming their portals preserve momentum. I'll have a satellite in visual range in 3 minutes."

Eidolon swore and Legend grew pale, but Alexandria simply asked, "And the Simurgh?"

"She pulled another 1600 G maneuver and is on course to meet them halfway. Whatever the missiles were, they detonated as soon as the city left the area, and I'm detecting hints of singeing on a few of her longer wings."

Alexandria contemplated that for 2 full seconds. "So they will meet in less than an hour."

Dragon nodded her CG avatar. "Yes, roughly over the Indian subcontinent."

"How many of the parahumans who have volunteered are capable of surviving and fighting in a vacuum?"

Dragon checked the numbers and power classifications. "11, unless you or Legend have been avoiding spaceflight for reasons other than the obvious."

Alexandria, the cape who almost never showed emotion, clenched her teeth in frustration. Then, with a visible effort, unclenched them to say, "Order them to stand down. That would be suicide for everyone involved. Have any blasters who are effective at a distance greater than 150 miles transported to India via Strider."

Dragon checked the numbers. "The only people who will admit to that kind of range are Legend, Eidolon if he gains the right power, and Scion could probably manage it simply because there's nothing we've found yet that he _can't_ do."

Alexandria gave Eidolon a look Dragon couldn't interpret, and then the feed cut out. Checking the connection, she found it was still secure and intact. The Triumvirate had simply stopped broadcasting any useful data.

How rude.

* * *

"All right," Harry said after quickly scanning local space to make sure the damn angel hadn't followed them somehow, "We're half of an equatorial orbit away from the object, which I'm going to call the Angel for nomenclature's sake. At current speeds, and assuming the Angel doesn't have any more tricks up its sleeve, we'll intersect her most probable trajectory in…less than 40 minutes. From the engagement, I can tell you with some confidence that she's either cheating by looking into the future or experiencing time at a stupidly dilated rate. Maybe both, who knows. Either way, Atlantean drones are much more maneuverable than anything that size should be, and she was dancing between the raindrops anyway. So…does anyone have a better plan than just running the hell away until the Angel stops following us? Because honestly I have no idea how the Angel is doing half the stuff it's doing, and all I can gather from the things I do know is that the Angel is way too unpredictable and powerful for any location within a light second or so to be what I would call 'a safe distance.'"

Harry examined the command crew as they took in what he'd said. Most of them were civilian staff, and they looked incredibly shaken by the news that the Drone weapons that had once defended their Earth from an entire fleet of warships were essentially useless. Even as worried muttering started to fill the deck, however, Dr. Weir stared him down.

"What are the odds that we'll still be able to find our way home if we run?"

And suddenly, everyone was silent again as they realized the enormity of the implications of such a question.

Harry just grimaced. "Not good. I've spent 500 years trying to find my way back to a single, specific Earth and I've never had any success. I've never had access to a Lantea-class city-ship, either, but I can tell you that running will only add more variables to a set of calculations that are already more complicated than I'm technically qualified to deal with. I can jump all over the galaxy, even the universe, if you give me the right ship. But the multiverse is a different matter entirely."

Dr. Weir visibly braced herself against Harry's answer even as she asked, "And what do you make of our odds in a confrontation with this…Angel?"

Harry sighed as he contemplated the options. Against a Seer like this, with so many anomalous readings? He didn't like those odds at all. "I'm not going to lie; I think we could survive a direct conflict. The Angel is at most 30 feet tall, probably less than that. There's only so much damage something that size can do, theoretically speaking. Unfortunately, the sensor readings make sense literally one third of the time, if that, when we scan the Angel. And given that two different sensors were reading density at wildly different values, it's very possible that there's more crammed into that little package than we can see. Honestly, the only way to tell how effective our weapons are would be to get a solid hit with one, and we won't be able to do that without resorting to tricks that may or may not work."

"What sort of tricks-" but Dr. Weir was cut off as the entire city lurched wildly and everything was suddenly lighter before the inertial strain was compensated once more by the inertial dampers. Harry frowned. The sort of deceleration required to overwhelm the dampers at the level he had them set to should have been functionally impossible to achieve in a city this size.

"What was that?" Dr. Weir asked.

Harry dipped into the sensors to find out, and was completely baffled by what he found. "We've…stopped?" he said hesitantly, furiously double and triple checking the readings, but they didn't change. He ran a diagnostic on the sensors, and it came back green. Bloody hell, they'd gone from orbital velocity to zero in less than a second. In a ship that was 20 kilometers wide. And then Harry realized what else the sensors were telling him, and he began to worry.

Harry hadn't really been worried, before. Even if there was a freaky angelic anomaly that didn't follow any of the laws of reality as he knew them, he'd honestly dealt with worse. They could just hyperjump away and never look back if worse came to worst. But when he saw the second anomaly, a larger-than-life, fat, black-as-midnight humanoid with features that clearly only resembled human ones for form's sake, he began to suspect that this situation would be difficult to escape.

After all, the engines were still running at full power, and this creature had somehow managed to stop them in their tracks with nothing more than an outstretched hand.

* * *

Contessa lay in the middle of her cell, idly wondering how badly it would hurt if she touched the energy projected between the bars of her cell. She knew only that the Path told her to avoid touching anything other than the floor, and that she couldn't escape now, she could only wait for a chance to speak to her captors. She had to wait precisely…precisely…oh no.

The sudden lurch caught Contessa by surprise. That, and her Path's sudden lack of reliability, meant that one of four possible threats had just interfered with her future, and she was well and truly on her own. Path to find out who is attacking? Well, that would get her out of her cell, but then the path disappeared into the fuzz she had come to associate with the Endbringers. Path to ask Harry to precisely describe the physical characteristics of the attacker and get a useful answer? Contessa felt her face drain of blood. Atlantis was such a big threat that the _Simurgh_ was calling in help? And from an as-yet-unseen Endbringer? Just how many of them were there?

And that was the question that Contessa truly regretted asking, because this time she got an answer. Apparently Atlantis had sensors capable of detecting the Endbringers while they were dormant. _All sixteen of them._ And the Harry on that Path took one look at the readings, wished her luck in dealing with that problem, and then began working on a way to get Atlantis out of this universe as quickly as possible. She tried to find a Path where he didn't leave, and the Path once again grew indistinct, but this time as though she were dealing with a hostile Thinker. Further investigation revealed that Harry did, indeed, have a way to combat Seers. And though she tried her hardest, she couldn't find a Path that convinced him to attempt to use those methods on the Simurgh. The Path didn't simply grow indistinct; it split into 27 different Paths as if to illustrate just how many ways there were for her to fail.

The last time the Path had done that, it had seemed to be cautioning her against any kind of direct conflict with Glaistig Ulstaine. The fact that Harry merited a similar response from her Path did not help Contessa's growing panic.

And then the energy flowing between the bars of her cell flickered and disappeared. Contessa jerked up into a sitting position in shock, and saw the very object of her frustration staring down at her.

"…Mr. Potter," she said cautiously.

Harry tilted his head oddly. "You weren't expecting me? That's strange."

Contessa shook her head. "The thing which has stopped the city, we call it an Endbringer. There were three before you came. This is the fourth. It…" for the first time in 20 years, Contessa faltered. She didn't use the Path for everything, not even nearly, but a conversation this important was something she simply wasn't used to doing without help.

"It what?" Harry asked impatiently.

"It…blocks my Path. My Agent cannot predict their movements, and I only know that it isn't one of the three I am familiar with because I asked you to describe it, in one of the Paths."

"Well," Harry muttered, "That's less than helpful." Then, louder, he said, "I don't suppose you know of anyone who can accurately predict their actions, either, do you?"

Contessa's hopeless expression told him everything he needed to know.

"What about engineers? People who could potentially work on the drive system that Atlantis uses to create wormholes, or even just the sublight engines?"

Contessa found a Path almost immediately which allowed her to collect 23 individuals who fit those descriptors. "I know of several, but gathering them would take time."

"How long?"

The Path split when she asked for speed instead of quantity. "Seven within the hour. The rest are all villains, and would take much longer to persuade."

Harry eyed her carefully. "And by persuade, you mean abuse these 'Paths' of yours to the maximum?"

Suddenly, the beginning of all of the Paths she had active began to fade into uncertainty, only returning to normal once she left Harry's presence. Contessa schooled her expression as well as she could under the circumstances. "Yes. I…I suppose you might not approve of the actions I take to see the future come to pass, but I work only to save humanity. When that much is at stake, even a billion lives are a small price to pay." Contessa knew she had misspoken, because abruptly all of her paths went dark, most with odd flashes of red light.

"And what, exactly, are you saving humanity from, Contessa?" Harry asked her in a voice made of ice.

The Path she had seen when she first got her power flashed before her eyes, the Path the Entity had plotted out for itself using the ability to create any victory it wanted.

"Extinction," she said simply, bracing for the red light that had ended her Paths. But suddenly, the Paths flickered back into existence, hardly altered at all, as though nothing had gone wrong. Her eyes widened. "What…what _are_ you?" she asked the man standing in front of her.

Harry sighed, and his expression grew distant. "I guess you could call me Fate's chew toy. I am a wizard who reached for the stars, and then when I finally grasped them, I became a wizard who had lost everything he loved. I don't know what it is that you Saw in my future that scared you so much, but I can assure you that I've survived worse. You don't live to be 700 years old by being easy to get rid of." Suddenly, his eyes refocused. "Which is why I need your help. I don't have the luxury of distrusting you at the moment, and it sounds like you're in just as much trouble as we are. So…I'll leave you to your own devices. Even in the worst case, your fate shouldn't be linked to this city simply because you had the misfortune to be here when it got destroyed. If you decide to help…well, those engineers you mentioned might be useful in the near future. If we survive. So keep that in mind." And then he twisted and vanished with a quiet _pop._

Somehow, even despite the absence of any useful Paths to force honesty from the wizard, Contessa knew that he wasn't deceiving her. That thought scared her even more than the revelation that his future changed based on her action in ways even her Path to Victory couldn't account for.

* * *

As Harry apparated back up to the command deck, he carefully hid his emotions behind his usual friendly smile. He hated it when Seers looked at him like that. It wasn't even the look of someone who knew all of his secrets, or someone who thought the understood how difficult his life had been. No, that look was the fear that every Seer who had ever examined him for any length of time felt when they realized that he got into and out of dangerous situations like most people drank water: easily and with only minimal choking when he somehow managed to mess up such a simple activity.

Speaking of dangerous situations.

"Lantis, what do you have for me?" he asked aloud, silently encouraging her to share any good news out loud as well. Morale was a valuable resource in situations like this.

"I have determined the method the second entity appears to be using to arrest our motion, and also the reason we haven't yet fallen to the planet below. The entity is using some form of temporal manipulation to accelerate time outside of the city's shield. While we are apparently stationary from our perspective, we are objectively still maintaining orbital velocity on a timescale of approximately 1,000,000 to 1."

Well, that did count as good news. If you squinted. "So we're trapped in a time bubble?" he clarified.

"Essentially, yes. The temporal shield that protects the city from the unsavory results of faster than light travel is keeping our perception of time consistent with the universe outside of the 'bubble,' however, something which I doubt the entity expected."

Yes, that would explain why it hadn't done anything other than hold them in place. It was hoping entropy would to the hard work for it. How ruthlessly efficient. But unless Harry missed his guess, there might actually be an easy way out of this one. "Is the entity keeping itself within the effects of its time bubble?" Weir looked at him sharply, questions clear in her eyes. He ignored her for now.

"No, it is not. However, due to the 'bubble' surrounding our shields, and attack attempting to reach the entity would expire long before getting close," Lantis said, as brutally honest as ever.

Harry grinned. "That, Lantis, is because you lack imagination."

Dr. Weir's face grew guarded as she asked, "Harry, what are you planning?"

"Oh that's simple," he said as he turned to face her, "we just open a wormhole inside the shield and outside of this thing's time bubble and use that to land an attack. Preferably a decisive one, because it's effectively cut off all communications with the outside world and it might be able to pull its time bubble around itself defensively if it realizes we're actually capable of getting attacks past its current defenses."

"Can we actually do that?" Rodney asked, "Stargates don't even work at this range, even if there was another one to connect a wormhole to."

Harry sighed, and then apparated through a classic starburst defense form, as written in chapter 3 of the auror's handbook. Hitting five points of a 10 meter-wide star before rapidly apparating back and forth rapidly between the points so quickly that he almost appeared to be in five places at once. When he finished and apparated back to where he'd started, he simply said, "You seem to be forgetting that I can literally teleport across a planet, Rodney. Getting something to the big black fellow out there isn't the problem. The problem is hitting it hard enough that it lets go."

Rodney, and indeed everyone who'd witnessed his casual apparition in the past, looked no less awed than those who hadn't been aware that he could teleport at all. To be fair, he had just demonstrated one of the most complicated apparition techniques known to the British Ministry without batting an eye, but he'd had a _lot_ of practice over the years.

"Right…" Rodney said, for once unable to come up with a snarky response.

Now… _Lantis, do you think we can use the Astria Porta as a delivery mechanism, or is it incapable of projecting wormholes without a fixed target?_

Lantis was silent for several seconds, no doubt calculating the answer to that question. _It may be possible,_ she said eventually, _but it might be better to generate a wormhole yourself. You would have more control over the resulting folds in spacetime that way._

Bloody brilliant, Harry groused to himself. _All right then, blank the shields,_ he told Lantis, _I don't want these things seeing me carve wormhole runes into the city. That would rather give away our plans. And…do you have a way to block the Sight of Seers like the Angel?_

Lantis once more projected amusement at Harry. _As I said, Harry, you are far from the first of your kind that I have needed to contain._

What? But he was pants at divination! Harry pushed the thought from his mind, resolving to wonder about it later. "Okay," he said aloud, interrupting the quiet conferring that had been going on while he spoke with Lantis, "I have a plan."

Dr. Weir, long used to Harry's hijinks, sighed with relief. "Good. I don't know if we could get out of this without your help this time."

Harry considered that briefly, before admitting, "You probably couldn't. But I'm the one who fixed the wormhole drive and got you into this mess, so it's my responsibility to get you back out of it. And…you might want to gather all personnel to this tower. If the worst should happen, we're going to need to evacuate in a hurry."

Weir nodded. "So what's your plan?"

Harry grinned. "It's actually very simple this time, we wait for the right moment and then hit them as hard as we can…"

* * *

"Any news, Dragon?" Legend asked.

"The Simurgh has arrived at the border of the field holding the city in place, and is now hovering in place," Dragon said, wondering what on Earth the two Endbringers were waiting for. "Her wings are still held in a posture I would call defensive, but you know as well as I do how worthwhile that information is."

"Actually, this is the longest the Simurgh has ever maintained a defensive stance," Alexandria said, reminding Dragon that she had a Thinker rating to match her Mover and Brute ones. "It's possible she is genuinely cautious when confronting this city. The Thinker I consulted was of the opinion that any attempt at boarding the city itself would be met with overwhelming force of the likes this Thinker had never seen."

Legend looked at her sharply. "Really? You mean not even-"

"Yes," Alexandria said simply, cutting off Legend's question.

"But what about-"

"Getting aboard was not the problem. Capture was inevitable once boarding had occurred, however, despite the fact that such a thing shouldn't be possible."

Dragon didn't fully understand what Alexandria was saying, but from Legend and Eidolon's shocked looks she gathered that this 'oracle' of theirs had never given such a bleak prediction. Interesting.

"Wait, something's happening," Dragon said, "the city's shields just turned opaque!"

"The Simurgh also shifted her head," Legend said. The Triumvirate was watching the live feed from the satellite for lack of anything better to do. "I think she's looking at the new Endbringer."

Alexandria's frown, if anything, grew more pronounced. Eidolon looked lost. Dragon, for her part, couldn't help but wonder why the city's shields had only darkened _now_ of all times. Surely if the Endbringers could have blinded the city before, they would have done it? And if it was instead some sort of defensive measure, why had it not been taken earlier?

One of Dragon's sensor's tripped an alert.

"The Simurgh's is moving…she appears to be slowly backing away from the city," Dragon reported.

"So this was a defensive measure?" Legend asked. No one offered an answer. None of them could make heads or tails out of the situation.

And then, quite suddenly, both Endbringers literally exploded, a storm of plasma replacing them at temperatures that even the Sun couldn't match. Dragon frantically reviewed the footage, only noticing on a third viewing that, for a single frame, both Endbringers were bisected by some sort of…portal. "The city just launched an attack on both of the Endbringers at once!" she exclaimed incredulously. Seeing the looks of disbelief from the Triumvirate, she replayed the relevant frames of the live feed. "Do you see the portal appearing in the very last frame before the explosions? If that didn't come from the city, then I'm not a Tinker."

Eidolon frowned, looking back to the live feed, where the explosions where the Endbringers had been continued to block and view of what was happening to either one of them. "Are you telling me that they managed to surprise the _Simurgh?"_

"The evidence would suggest so, yes," Alexandria said, "And considering that the city could outwit even our strongest Thinker, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised."

Quite suddenly, the city which had for the past 47 minutes hovered in place shot forward at orbital velocities, the shield casually shrugging off the explosion that had replaced the Simurgh. Dragon frantically repositioned her sensors, trying to keep track of the city as it went from stationary into a stable orbit just as suddenly as it had stopped in the first place. She noted almost absently that the field created by the new Endbringer had disappeared, and that there was now simply no trace of either Endbringer anywhere to be seen. And just before the city once more dropped below the horizon relative to her sensors, she saw the shield lose its opacity.

A Doorway opened behind the Triumvirate. A woman stepped through the doorway, wearing a neatly cut business suit and fedora. "The Endbringers have been destroyed. No, I do not know how, you will have to ask the commanders of the City of Atlantis yourself. Now that their shield has been recalibrated to allow communications to escape the city, they can be contacted by conventional means. Doormaker, exit." And the Doorway behind her shifted somehow, revealing a featureless white hallway. The woman stepped through, and the Doorway shrank shut behind her.

Notably, none of the Triumvirate looked terribly shocked by her appearance. "That was your oracle, I presume," Dragon asked.

"Yes," Alexandria said, "And you are the fourth being on the planet to have more than rumors of her existence, so I must request that you keep her existence quiet. I _will_ make it a legal order if I have to, as this is a matter of national security."

Dragon couldn't feel chills, being an Artificial Intelligence. But suddenly, she felt quite unnerved by the idea that the Triumvirate had known, all this time, that legal orders could bind her more strictly than they could any organic being thanks to her father's shackles. "I'll keep my mouth shut, Alexandria. No need to put it in writing. I'm sure you don't want this getting out any more than I do." Or, in other words, now that I know you know, you would be unwise to abuse the shackles placed on me any longer. From the irritated twitch of Alexandria's mouth, Dragon gathered that the message had been received loud and clear. "Now, your oracle friend mentioned that we should get in contact with this city of…Atlantis, did she say?"

* * *

Harry carefully picked himself up off the floor. Suddenly resuming orbital velocity had been a nasty shock, but at least it meant that the damned thing holding the city in place was gone. _Lantis, any signs the Angel survived?_ he asked, not wanting to take any chances.

 _None at the moment, but given how anomalous the readings on it were in the first place, I wouldn't lower your guard if I were you,_ Lantis said.

Harry nodded in agreement. He wasn't going to be relaxing anytime soon. Probably not until they'd returned to the proper timeline. Because this one had truly terrifying monsters in it, and he _really_ didn't want to stick around to see if any more showed up. After all, if those two were the welcoming party, he didn't even want to think about what the rest of the planet was like.

"What the…Dr. Weir, we're being hailed," the comms officer said.

"We're being what now?" Harry asked, "They send those unholy abominations from hell after us, and only hail us _after_ we've destroyed them?"

"Open a channel, Wesley," Weir said, giving Harry a _look._ He decided to keep to himself. Unless he was right, of course, because then they'd have bigger problems to worry about. Like just what in the name of sanity those things had even been.

"…on behalf of the planet below, calling the city in orbit, please respond." a female voice said, "I repeat, this is the Triumvirate speaking on behalf of the planet below, calling the city in orbit, please respond."

Well, that was friendlier than Harry had been expecting.

* * *

 **A/N: Did anyone else wonder why the Endbringer with _time_ powers of all things was the one that teleported around the planet? 4th dimensional physics, that's why. Also, if Khonsu wasn't holding back with those polite, slow-moving time dilation fields I'll eat my own foot.**

 **So…this was a long omake. Still, I needed to write this, I think, as much to get an idea of the endgame for Atlantis as to get all the damned Worm plot bunnies off my chest.**

 **Here's hoping you leave reviews and…stuff. Next chapter should, theoretically, be up soonish. Probably.**

 **Best of wishes,**

 **~feauxen**


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